[SoaS] links from homepage to Downloads page

[Sean DALY]

It's clear that anything other than pre-installed raises a barrier
most teachers don't want to deal with. However, getting Sugar
referenced with an OEM is far easier said than done. And Apple is not
particularly motivated to encourage others to boot non-Apple OSes on
their hardware.

In the meantime, we have to make the difficult as simple as possible.
This includes installers and documentation including videos.

I don't want to underestimate teachers' motivation to find software
for their students, either. I have found that Sugar's unbeatable price
and nonprofit orientation are consistently appreciated by teachers.

Sean


On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 2:06 PM, DancesWithCars <danceswithcars at gmail.com> wrote:
> do you all think installing a VM is easier than
> making a LiveCD, or SOAS and rebooting?
>
> Most Macs these days are Intel,
> it's the hardware compatibility to get something
> to boot from BIOS, and other issues, AFAICT...
>
> Of the kids and adults I've talked to, over the years
> (realizing most people here have more experience)
> they don't bother unless an XO-1.x or better is put
> before them...  They fall in love with the hardware,
> the cuteness factor, and if it's on a regular machine
> (even the RPi I've tried a few on), it's a no go,
> generally...
>
> Not that it's not worth having, jhbuild, sweets, VMs, etc
> are all good, but most non technical people won't
> try it, AFAICT...
>
> ---
> odd nonstandard keyboard so who knows what I intended to type...
>
> On Feb 3, 2013 7:21 AM, "Thomas Gilliard" <satellit at bendbroadband.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Sean;
>>
>> I just did a cleanup of the wiki pages covering Virtual Box and Importable
>> appliances
>>  deleted a lot of obsolete information and their links [5]
>>
>> I updated:
>>  Downloads [1] [2]; Fedora_18 [3]; and Sugar_on_a_Stick [4] wiki pages
>>
>> Tom Gilliard
>> satellit on #sugar freenode IRC
>>
>> [1]
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads#Virtual_Machines_on_all_platforms
>>  Links to Virtual Box Appliances :
>> [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit/VirtualBox
>>  Links to Soas-v8:
>> [3]
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_18#Sugar_on_a_Stick_v8_.CA.BB.C5.8Chelo_.CA.BBai
>> [4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick
>>  This page is still not updated, you have to scroll down to find SoaS-v8
>> [5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Special:RecentChanges
>>
>>
>>
>> On 02/02/2013 04:14 PM, Sean DALY wrote:
>>>
>>> For the past couple of years, our homepage has linked the Sugar on a
>>> Stick (SoaS) badge to the SoaS page [1] and the "download" menu item
>>> and "Try it with a child today" link to the Downloads page [2].
>>>
>>> The downloads page rightly in my view orients visitors by platform,
>>> but the two largest market share desktop/laptop OSes (Windows & MacOS,
>>> 96% or so of market) only give instructions for Sugar on a Stick and
>>> the "Do you use a virtual machine?" link misses the excellent VMs
>>> available (in particular the VMs of... SoaS!).
>>>
>>> I think teachers will self-classify by OS and virtually none of them
>>> will self-classify as virtual machine users.
>>>
>>> Teachers will also expect pancake button 1-click installers (this was
>>> confirmed by Sloan Marketlab study), problematic with SoaS due to
>>> necessary USB stick manipulation and still a bit hairy on a Mac.
>>>
>>> I think Windows section and Mac section should both propose choice of
>>> SoaS and using VirtualBox with a SoaS VM, explaining benefits of each
>>> method in layman's terms.
>>>
>>> VMs are far less disruptive for trying Sugar, as a teacher can
>>> download to hard disk, install and run, keeping usual apps going
>>> (mail, browser, word processing) while experiencing Sugar.
>>>
>>> The downside is of course massive files to download, but that could be
>>> mitigated with torrents and/or mirrors.
>>>
>>> Comment please before we get into wiki editing of this crucial page
>>> thanks
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick
>>> [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/DocumentationTeam/Try_Sugar
>>>
>>
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