[Sugar-devel] Sugar as desktop os

[Simon Schampijer]

On 07/10/2009 07:09 PM, Philippe Clérié wrote:
> 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.
>

Hi Philippe,

I am doing the same thing in my pilot in a school here in Berlin. I use 
Fedora as OS, and do "yum groupinstall sugar-desktop". You can then log 
into Sugar as an alternate desktop (in gdm login after typing the user 
you can select the session at the bottom). No need for the emulation. I 
have a server that provides the authentication via openldap and the home 
folders are mounted via NFS. Even though I will have local installations 
(the OS) on each machine - the authentication will happen at the server. 
So this is one scenario. Otherwise you can use thin clients and LTSP.

Hope this helps - will share more info as I go in my blog,
    Simon