[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar oversight board meeting

Sameer Verma sverma at sfsu.edu
Tue Nov 5 17:07:22 EST 2013


On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Flavio Danesse <fdanesse at gmail.com> wrote:
> My humble opinion (please stick to one):
>
> To put into perspective the opinion, I should remember that besides
> developing for sugar since 2009, I am also a teacher in high school, so I've
> been inside ceibal classrooms during this time.
>
> From the beginning, I said I saw the fate of sugar linked to the xo, the one
> without the other does not seem to make sense. Now, OLPC xo 4 and
> manufactures their away strip.
>
> For those who did the port to gtk3 last year, and we have also had to deal
> with the problems of arm processors, etc.. . ., We do not easily see how
> much time is lost in these "strategic decisions" while it ignores the
> feedback from deployments.
>
> I think this whole issue of android and html5, is a very grave mistake,
> probably the last.
>

Flavio,

Can you expand on your opinion on HTML5 and Android? i am very interested.

I am a teacher, but not as fortunate as you. I teach college and
graduate level students. By that time I get them, the damage is
somewhat irreversible :-(

Sameer

> But hey, I'm just a teacher, probably the only one in this list.
>
>
> 2013/11/5 Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com>
>>
>> Oh, awesome, COPR seems to be exactly what we need.
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, 5 November 2013, Peter Robinson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Going a bit off topic, but a pretty major issue I see in our workflow
>>> > with
>>> > Fedora is that we don't have a good way to develop unstable Sugar on a
>>> > stable Fedora. Rawhide is, or at least is perceived as, unstable. And
>>> > I'm
>>> > not sure what would be a good way to, for example, produce and
>>> > distribute
>>> > 0.100 rpms for Fedora 19. We can setup our custom automated build
>>> > system and
>>> > repository of course, but I'm not sure that's a good approach? Part of
>>> > the
>>> > problem here is that upstream tends to depend strongly on very recent
>>> > libraries which are not yet available in the stable fedora, though
>>> > maybe now
>>> > that the gi conversion is over we can avoid that.
>>>
>>> Actually a lot of that will be solved perfectly with COPR (similar in
>>> style to Ubuntu PPA) which is being worked upon at the moment and it
>>> should solve all the problems you see by enabling newer versions to be
>>> built for older releases while maintaining the stable shipped release
>>> in mainline.
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>> > On Tuesday, 5 November 2013, Peter Robinson wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 2:14 AM, Walter Bender
>>> >> <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >> > On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 7:42 PM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com>
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> >> >> On 4 November 2013 22:53, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> >>>
>>> >> >>> * It's not clear to me where we are going. The OLPC/Sugar
>>> >> >>> development
>>> >> >>> ecosystem seems to be at a crossroads. I am encouraged by the web
>>> >> >>> activity
>>> >> >>> work, but don't understand the path of transposing the value
>>> >> >>> proposition of
>>> >> >>> Sugar (interface, Journal, collaboration, Activities) to handheld
>>> >> >>> tactile
>>> >> >>> devices (tablets to smartphones). PCs (of any size) with keyboards
>>> >> >>> are
>>> >> >>> no
>>> >> >>> longer competitive with tablets for grade-school classroom use.
>>> >> >>> Perhaps the
>>> >> >>> XO-4 could still be in the running; there is no clear message from
>>> >> >>> OLPC.
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> I'll try to express briefly my feelings about the directions the
>>> >> >> project
>>> >> >> could take. Note that I might be missing a lot of what is going on
>>> >> >> above the
>>> >> >> technical level.
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> * The XO is not a viable hardware platform other than for existing
>>> >> >> deployments. OLPC is pretty clearly going in a different direction.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I may be alone in thinking that there will be some runway left with
>>> >> > the XO. But deployments need alternatives regardless.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> * Sugar web activities on the top of a full Android loses too much
>>> >> >> of
>>> >> >> the
>>> >> >> Sugar value proposition. It's great to have it in addition to
>>> >> >> Sugar-the-OS,
>>> >> >> but it's not enough alone.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I agree.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> * From the technical point of view there are several ways to get
>>> >> >> Sugar-the-OS running on tactile devices. Unfortunately it's not
>>> >> >> clear
>>> >> >> to me
>>> >> >> that any of these devices is open enough to be viable for
>>> >> >> deployments
>>> >> >> or
>>> >> >> "ordinary" users.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > We looked at ChromeOS a few years back, but at the time it was too
>>> >> > heavy for our hardware. Today, it is a different story. Might be a
>>> >> > viable option. Certainly running GNU/Linux/Sugar on a ChromeBook is
>>> >> > not a bad starting point.
>>> >>
>>> >> Given that ChromeOS is locked down I don't believe it's viable to ask
>>> >> a School to have to break/hack the HW to get it working OOTB.
>>> >>
>>> >> Having been involved in the OLPC OS side of things I believe you would
>>> >> be much better taking the work done by OLPC with things like
>>> >> olpc-os-builder and the work upstream with Fedora to use it to build
>>> >> out OS images that will work in a similar way across both XOs and
>>> >> other HW be it x86 netbook or cheap ARM devices rather than
>>> >> reinventing the wheel!
>>> >>
>>> >> Peter
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Daniel Narvaez
>>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Narvaez
>>
>>
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
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