[Sugar-devel] [Zero-install-devel] Summary of the chat on #sugar-meeting

[Michael Stone]

Dear z-i folks and sugar folks,

Three members of the 0install.net community [1] met with several members
of the Sugar community [2] yesterday to exchange knowledge and, in the
case of the Sugar folks, to learn more about z-i and whether it might be
a good fit for use in Sugar activity installation. 

After the meeting, Thomas wrote up a great set of notes (mostly
describing his answers to Ben's questions) here:

   http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.zero-install.devel/2776

Please peruse this QnA if you'd like to know what was discussed and
please follow up with someone who seems approachable if you develop new
questions as a result of reading.

Next, it seems that several of the z-i participants decided after our
meeting to try out Sugar (on a variety of platforms) and to share their
experiences in replies to the z-i-d thread I mentioned above. 

Therefore, for your convenience, I have collected a few of their notable
remarks in the sequel of this email. Please read through them and
respond if you feel so moved.

Kind regards,

Michael

P.S. - Eben and Sebastian: you are both personally CC'ed since I saw
several experience reports that looked like they would be of specific
interest to each of you.

P.P.S. - Ben and Rubén: you are CC'ed because you both mentioned to me
after the meeting that you found it useful for solidifying your
perspective on the relevance of technology like z-i to Sugar. Could you
each please reply with a summary of what you learned?

[1]: The z-i folks: Anders [afb], Rene [rsl], and Thomas [talex]
[2]: The sugar folks: Bernie [bernie], Sebastian [sdziallas], 
      Ben [bemasc], Aleksey [alsroot], Rubén [quidam] and myself

Now for the experience reports:

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> I tried to use the Ubuntu 9.04 version of Sugar, but it seems like
> it has some problems (wouldn't even start) and trying to use the PPA
> version seems to have messed up the whole system (so had to revert)

> Eventually I went with Fedora "Sugar on a Stick" (strawberry flavor),
> but we couldn't really make sense of it in the default boot setting
> with the black-and-white icons and all the small help text in english.

> Will try to look for some better testing instructions, but so far
> it has stumped both adult and child trying to run it on the Netbook.
> (Couldn't even figure out how to turn it off, so had to hard-power.)

--------------

Thomas Leonard wrote:
> Typing "halt" in the "Terminal" activity worked for me :-/

--------------

Rene Lopez wrote:
> The version that worked right for me was 0.86 (Debian unstable) and it's
> configured to work inside xephyr. I also didn't understood how it works
> but so far this is what I have found:
> * The X symbol represents you and your computer to shut it down right
> click it and a menu should appear.

> * The symbols that are around the X are the favorite Activities, left
> click will open them.

> * The small symbol under the X is the last used open activity.

> * To switch applications you move the pointer to a corner and a frame
> should appear.

> * And finally if your computer only has a one button mouse you can leave
> the button pressed to get the same behavior as the right click.

--------------

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> So I guess my experience with Sugar was similar to their experience
> with Zero Install and trying to run the old Subversion feed etc...
> But it seems less than smooth (chunky?) with Ubuntu 9.04 or Fedora 11.

--------------

Rene Lopez wrote:
> I think that the problem is that their target users have a teacher to
> explain how to use it and the teacher has a printed manual so it's not
> hard to them but for an outsider it will be very different to anything
> that you have used and it doesn't self document making it somewhat
> frustrating.