[IAEP] Yama First impressions, OLPC OS 13.1 31018

[Yama Ploskonka]

IMHO networking security might gain from having an option to permanently 
hide the password. I believe Linux is years ahead of Windows in this, as 
we can choose to make the password visible or not, but it would add 
security if passwords also could be hidden permanently, as a third 
choice, especially to avoid other people getting some school password.
It still should be possible to have it visible or not when entering it - 
so much easier to correct mistakes, mistakes get common as passwords get 
longer or complex.

*Sugar GUI*
(I personally have given up on Sugar getting easier to use as versions 
accrue. What I saw shows not much difference of what we had)
1) I personally like the spiral, aesthetically.
Yet, it makes finding something even harder, but then finding Activities 
easily didn't seem to be the goal of the Favorites view.
Terminal is hidden again.
If someone /deserves/ Terminal privileges, they can learn how to get it, 
so it's OK

2) "Mayan numbers" for the Mesh Network was announced many times, but 
AFAIK never implemented.
Mesh icons are still undistinguishable from each other, which gives a 
more than even chance of failure when trying to find the right one. Why 
failing 2 out of 3 is the design policy, I never understood.
The access points still have the minimalist, "find me if you can" look

3) Using Browse, I am amazed that Google shows no ads. That's great!
     but blogspot.com does. I do know how to avoid those eating up 
bandwidth in Gnome, but not in Browse - maybe it ¡s as simple .

*Gnome*
4) We have gained the Desktop back! Yay!
I was able to make do around what we had in 12.1, but 13.1 is so much 
better (meaning, easier and more convenient) to be able to have one's 
own folders, etc, in the desktop.


*My pet project, files for MSP430 microcontrollers*
(I tried from Gnome, but this being a Terminal command, ot probably 
works as well from Sugar)

    sudo yum install msp430-libc mspdebug

It ran out of the box, loading dependencies, etc, with almost no errors 
(with previous versions there were always several warnings, that didn't 
seem to break things) One Rpmdb checksum is invalid, but hey, what is 
that amongst friends?

AND!!!
the versions are the very latest, mspdebug is .21, and gcc is 4.6.3-1

*GREAT!* (happy)

Bottom line, after just a first look, Sugar doesn't seem improved, but 
Gnome is much, much better than it ever was (even "good desktop Gnome" 
OS versions used to have issues with the files I need)