Most of you, Linux users have always been limited to the two big desktop names in Linux. GNOME and KDE today represent the Linux desktop. But there exist other desktop environment along with these two; XFCE, LDE etc. All these desktop enviroment was made with a normal desktop or laptop in mind but one desktop was made with small screen and children in mind.
Yes, the Sugar; the XO’s desktop from Sugar Labs. Wikipedia defines Sugar as:
Sugar is a free desktop environment designed with the goal of being used by children for learning.
Though named as child’s desktop environment, I found Sugar as easy as GNOME, as plasmic as KDE and as lightweight as XFCE. Which means Sugar is way other than today’s default Linux Desktop. Yes, it was made for child to use in smaller LCD sized OLPC XO and of course lacks many normal desktop enviroment features.
After running Sugar in the XO, I installed XO in my Fedora 10 laptop. The install instructions are as follows from fedora wiki.
$ sudo yum groupinstall sugar-desktop
PS: I tried to install it in Ubuntu but it encounter errors.
Let’s start with the Main Desktop area, which i would love to call the F3 Desktop. It list all the activity (programs in XO) in an circular fashion by default. From here can access the Sugar Activities. As I am using it in my laptop not an XO, i cannot access my personal apps like Firefox, Pidgin from the activity. There are two ways of doing so as far as i know; one just open terminal activity and starts the programs another make activity yourself. Last one is of course time consuming so I went for the first one. Just open as many programs I would generally start during my normal desktop startup from the terminal acivity. The only differences in the applications was the menu and text boxes depending on the program(BTW: Sugar is also based on GTK).
The Sugar Desktop (Click to Enlarge)
As I discussed above the home desktop(the F3 Desktop); now let’s go the F1 and F2 desktops. These are the Schools and Friends Network Desktop in case of an XO but in my case it lists the available wirelesses to which i can get connected.
The Default Desktop (Click for Enlarged View)
Alt + Tab works in Sugar, which gives you easier switching between apps. The black and white theme of the desktop is just awesome. Rather than desktop environment it loads in seconds after the login screen. Though one encounter many problems while using Sugar for their desktpo. The Fn Combination doesn’t work which means you cannot change the brightness(Tip: Change the brightness in the login screen), volume etc. Volume is always highest when any audio/video program is started, so watch your ears. And many other the most terrible being you can use application with long menu list and large controls such as buttons, menus and etc. Anyway this desktop can be tweaked to get most out of it. I would suggest that rather than working on to get big resource hungry GNOME and KDE on Netbook Sugar would be the best choice.
Listed View of Activity rather than default circular one. (Click to Enlarge)
Sugar is a cool,clean,minimal, elegant desktop for Linux.
But to be ready for desktop user it needs some love right now.
Some Screen shots from my Fedora 10 Sugar(Click to enlarge):
The Sugar Control Panel
Firefox in Sugar
Chromium in Sugar
Gimp Editing in Sugar
Inkscape in Sugar
The Moon Activity
Pidgin in Sugar
Terminal Activity in Sugar
Browsing the web
The Write Activity
PS: I can add more if you suggest or want.
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5 Comments
Please, add the word processor screenshots (I believe, it’s AbiWord-based)
Here you go Ilya Ilembitov !
I have added the screenshot of the write activity.
I got one of the first XO machines in the G1G1 program and felt at the time it was the start of the next evolution for educational computing. I am delighted that it focussed on children in developing countries and not just making another dollar. It led the way for netbooks and that helps ALL countries bring the cost of educational computing down. There is still a digital chasm in the so-called developing countries!
Innovation comes from need, and I think it comes when we think simple. XO now is a way for many possibilities. Geoff, thanks for dropping by.
I tried Sugar with the plan of running Sugar in my children’s school.
I found the Sugar user interface confusing, and not intuitive. It follows a different paradigm from what is used the rest of the time. Too many of the functions could only be accessed through control keys.
There are some great activities that run under Sugar unfortunately it appears that they only run under Sugar.
We passed on Sugar.