[Sugar-devel] Sugar as desktop os

[Philippe Clérié]

I am looking into implenting sugar for a Montessori school. The 
current plan is to start with 10 to 20 (depending on budget) 
computers for a group of about 100 students from 6 to 13, and usage 
would be on a rotating basis by groups. 

At this stage, there is no plan to supply each child with a 
computer. On the other hand, if this implementation is reasonably 
successful then the school will probably recommend that parents buy 
computers for their children.

As things stand now what I was hoping to do is :

- Install Sugar on each computer as the main OS.
- Setup a server to hold the kids' home directories and provide 
other services as needed (routing and chat among other things...).

I am familiar with the XO and I have downloaded Sugar on a Stick to 
try it out.

My first problem with SaoS is that there is no easy way to install 
the OS on a hard disk. By easy, I mean something like a) boot the 
stick, b) click on install to hard disk, or something equivalent. 
(As a side note, SaoS includes none of the sound/music applications! 
That's a huge loss!)

I looked at the distributions I use, Debian and Ubuntu, and at 
Fedora because Sugar is derived from it. All three seem to have 
small problems. In addition it seems that they all require a sugar-
emulator and it's not clear to me what is being emulated.

I'm on a short schedule (only 4/6 weeks to procure and setup) so I 
am looking for quick answers to avoid blind alleys while doing the 
necessary research.

Any comments/pointers welcome. Mostly I think what I'd like to know 
is whether what I'm thinking of is even possible. Specifically, is it 
possible and how difficult would it be to have share use of a computer 
with Sugar as the only desktop OS?

Thanks in advance!

Note: The hardware I am looking at is the HP Mini 110 Mi and the 
System76 Starling Netbook.

-- 


Philippe

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