[IAEP] Fwd: Sugar USB testing

[David Farning]

I am forwarding a conversation that I have been have with Caroline Meeks to
iaep so that we can archive her experiances.

Caroline is a researcher who is interested in testing Sugar as part of a
research project.  I will let her fill you in on more of the project details
herself.

thanks
david

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Sugar USB testing
To: Caroline Meeks <caroline at solutiongrove.com>
Cc: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>


On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 5:35 PM, Caroline Meeks
<caroline at solutiongrove.com>wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> Since I don't have an exact duplicate of the machine here, Friday's trip
> will be devoted to figuring out the answers to your questions.
>
> Let me test my understanding. Are these statements true? -
>
>
>    1.  The XO hardware only has 256MB of RAM so in theory Sugar should
>    work on a Pentium 4 with 256MB RAM
>
> This is not necessarily true.  The xo runs a heavily modified version of
Fedora.  We are putting Sugar on top of stock Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu
distributions.  The trade off is engineering time vs. size.  It take a
tremendous amount of engineering time to maintain a modified distribution.
By using stock distributions as our base we greatly reduce the effort needed
to push Sugar through the distribution channels.


>
>    1.
>    2. The JoyRide live CD you were giving out at the conference will
>    likely not work unless there is more then 300MB of RAM
>
> I am not sure of the specific needs of the version of Sugar we
distributed.  Rather then try to determine if a older CD works, let's see if
stock fedora, ubuntu and debian work on your equipment.

>
>    1.
>
> Let me know what information you'd like me to collect on Friday.  Here are
> my thoughts.
>
> Goal 1 - See if we can get Sugar to run stable on the Shaw Computer Lab
> computers.  Sounds like  I can probably just burn a bunch of CDs and use
> those.  What do you want me to test?
>
> The distributions listed on this page:
> http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/Supported_systems
> Are the various ones for different Linux Distros full system or are they
> just the files you need to add Sugar to an existing Linux install?
>
>
>    - Fedora This one? http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora i686<http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Live/i686/Fedora-9-i686-Live.iso>- Live CD
>
> Yes, the live cd would be the place to start.

6.3. x86 Specifics for Fedora

This section covers specific information about Fedora and the x86 hardware
platform.
6.3.1. Hardware requirements for x86

In order to use specific features of Fedora 9 during or after installation,
you may need to know details of other hardware components such as video and
network cards.
 6.3.1.1. Processor and memory

The following CPU specifications are stated in terms of Intel processors.
Other processors, such as those from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA that are compatible
with and equivalent to the following Intel processors, may also be used with
Fedora.

Fedora 9 requires an Intel Pentium or better processor, and is optimized for
Pentium 4 and later processors.

   -

   Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better.
   -

   Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better.
   -

   Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB.
   -

   Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB.
   -

   Recommended RAM for graphical: 256MiB.

According to the release notes Fedora should work with 256MB


>
>    -
>    - Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
>
>  Yes again.

>
>    - <http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download>
>    - UbuntuMobile - Where is the best place to get an iso?
>    http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Other/Ubuntu-MID-39213.shtml
>
> For now let's forget about Gnome Mobile.

>
>    -
>    - Sugar - Where can I get an iso for a live CD that will has a chance
>    of working on 256MB of RAM? Should I use any of these?
>    http://dev.laptop.org/pub/livebackupcd/
>
>
>
>
>
> I will send you links to newer Live CD by Thursday evening.


> Goal 2 - Demoing Sugar capability to the Shaw School Staff.
>
> It turns out the technology teacher Marian is out this Friday so the goal
> of showing the collaborative features maybe next week.  However, doing a
> demo for adults on a wired network shouldn't be that hard right? Is there
> some Jabber server that adults who own XOs are using that we could use for
> the demo?
>

I was asked at least ten times about the availability of Jabber servers for
test purposes at Openminds.  As a result, I am looking into setting up a
jabber server so each community of Sugar users will have access to a
community specific server.  Once that is in place it should not be too hard
to set a batch of USB keys or Live CDs to go to that server by default.

>
> Goal 3 - Testing speed and durability of Sugar on a USB Key.
>
> I can do initial testing of that from here. We don't have to do that at the
> Shaw but if we had a USB that would be good.
>

This would be of great value to our developers.

>
> Thanks!
> Caroline
>

Would you be interested in moving this conversation to  our mailing list at
iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org so we can publicly archive this conversation.

Thanks
david
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