[Marketing] press release opportunity...

[Caroline Meeks]

As I noted in the wiki page about this:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO#Sticks_are_dieing_a_lot_-_Make_sticks_more_robust
2GB Sticks are $0.60 more then 1GB sticks.

If
it improves reliability its definitely worth it from a sheer TCO point of view.

A full install also makes it possible to browse the files from other
operating systems and allows the possiblity of a VM boot helper.

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Sebastian Dziallas <sebastian at when.com>wrote:

> Caroline Meeks wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com
>> <mailto:gary at garycmartin.com>> wrote:
>>
>>    On 29 Jul 2009, at 21:35, Walter Bender wrote:
>>
>>        Begin handwaving.
>>
>>        LiveUSB came from the world of LiveCD and with it came an "overlay"
>>        concept to enable writing in what had been a read-only world. It is
>>        not clear that the approach was intended for more than
>> demonstration
>>        purposes, in order to show off the power of Fedora Linux. That
>> would
>>        suggest that in the long run, we may need to revisit the way in
>>        which
>>        we manage user data on our images.
>>
>>        End handwaving.
>>
>>
>>    +1
>>
>>    My gut feeling is we don't want a LiveUSB, we want a bootable USB
>>    with a regular install on it. Ideally being installed from a LiveCD,
>>    that can either directly boot and demo Sugar, install to a USB
>>    stick, or install to a hard-disk. Once booted we'd want the minimum
>>    of file writes to maximise a stick lifetime, and reduce the chance
>>    of a write landing as a child unplugs.
>>
>>    Regards,
>>    --Gary
>>
>>
>> +1 except I think that we need it sooner not later.
>>
>> It is the most likely suspect on most of our stick failures. We will
>> have upset teachers and kids if its not more reliable plus added expense
>> and time costs.
>>
>> It is a blocker on:
>>
>>    * Reading things you've created on your Sugar Stick on a Windows or
>>      Mac machine.
>>    * Createing a VM that can switch stick based users without rebooting
>>      out of the native OS- This will help usability quite a bit on the
>>      Mac Laptops the GPA will be using next year.
>>
>> I'm going to try to create a spec and publicize our need for help to my
>> network. I'd love help with both parts of that.
>>
>
> I'll throw my two cents in here, too.
>
> I agree with Walter that we might need to revisit the whole concept in the
> long term. However, it's probably the best we can get right now.
>
> Let me put it this way: Looking at my recent composes for SoaS, those were
> around 390 MB. This contains the compressed squashfs image. Because of this
> compression, it's read-only, but it's also that small.
>
> Now in comparison, we could obviously place the whole file tree on a USB
> key and hack up some magic to make it boot. In fact, that's from what I see
> already the somehow preferred way used for the XO.
>
> But for this, we'd also need to have the file tree uncompressed (since
> otherwise it would be read-only again). And that could become a problem. The
> compression works rather well for us, so if we'd try to go this way, we'd
> definitely need to move the USB key size requirement up (at least 2 GB, if
> not even more).
>
> And then, I'm not really sure if this solves the data corruption issue
> (which I haven't experienced myself, so far) - because files could get
> destroyed if the USB key is improperly removed anyway.
>
> Caroline, maybe you could explain the way you're using to make these keys,
> because I've lost track about what the current way is.
>
> Regarding reading contents one created in Sugar on Windows / Mac, I think
> this is still quite some time away. In fact, I'm wondering whether this
> isn't a datastore related feature. /me thinks about this...
>
> Cheers,
> --Sebastian
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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