Recently in Mini Category

Summer of Code: Moar Newz.

By Sebastian Dziallas on July 27, 2010 1:16 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
I've been a little calm in terms of blogging about GSoC lately, since I'm getting ready for my move to the US. There are a couple of things I've been working on lately after pushing the sugar-smolt code upstream, though.

  • One of the major obstacles for the user in terms of creating Sugar on a Stick - and we have received reports about this - is that the instructions are either outdated or confused and the interfaces very wildly between different platforms and distributions. We've started addressing the first by working on a Creation Kit for SoaS v3. This doesn't mean all is shiny now, but we're getting there. We've recommended Fedora's LiveUSB Creator over the past release cycles when possible and would to continue to build on that. Hence, I've been trying to make it easier for users of other distributions to use the LiveUSB Creator. While I haven't had much success, yet, this is something I'd like to keep an eye on.
  • I've been working with Peter Robinson on getting Sugar into EPEL. We've gotten a large chunk of packages built already in the appropriate branch. Watch out for announcements coming your way.
  • Lucian, who's also doing a GSoC at Sugar Labs and working on porting Browse to Webkit (the result being Surf), has fixed one of the major regressions that affected SoaS v3. The Read activity didn't work due to upstream changes in evince's python bindings (#1900). However, thanks to this work, I've been able to take a new activity bundle, package it, and push it as an update to F13. It's currently in testing, so if you do get a minute, please comment on the update.

LinuxTag: Recap!

By Sebastian Dziallas on June 20, 2010 10:57 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
Looks like I'm a little late at catching up with my backlog. Oh well.

I attended LinuxTag earlier this June (thanks Simon for hosting me!) and had the chance to meet and catch up with a lot of folks I hadn't seen in a while. Sugar Labs also had a booth there and it was really good to see people (especially kids) playing with Sugar. Most popular activities included Maze, Physics and Speak. However, also Walter's new Abacus activity quickly gained interest.

Sugar Labs BalloonsI also learned that waking up three hours late (when having a talk scheduled in the morning) is probably not the best of all ideas -- probably unless you ask the cab driver. Got there in time, though and gave my talk on Leveraging Communities.

Sugar Labs also announced Sugar on a Stick v.3 (Mirabelle) widely at LinuxTag. Shameless plug goes here. Was a good time.

Mirabelles. They are there.

By Sebastian Dziallas on May 26, 2010 3:16 AM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack
I am proud to announce the availability of Sugar on a Stick v.3, code-named Mirabelle. More information about Sugar on a Stick, including download and installation details, is available at http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/. 

Mirabelles(picture by eNil taken from Flickr under a CC-BY-NC-ND license)

Changes in Sugar on a Stick since the last release (v.2 Blueberry):

Sugar version 0.88. The most recent release of the Sugar Learning Platform features support for 3G connections, increased accessibility, and better integration with our Activity Portal (http://activities.sugarlabs.org) allowing students and teachers to update their sticks with additional Activities. More information about the 0.88 release of Sugar is available at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.88/Notes.

Customize your own remix of Sugar on a Stick. You'll notice that v.3 Mirabelle has a smaller Activity selection than its predecessors, Blueberry and Strawberry. We realized we'll never be able to create an Activity selection suitable for all deployments - instead, we've chosen to include and support a core set of basic, teacher-tested Activities in the default image, and invite deployments to use this as a base on which to build a customized Activity selection for their classrooms. Instructions on how to do this are available at http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/docs/customization-guide/.

Sugar on a Stick is now a Fedora Spin. After two prior releases of being based on the Fedora distribution, Sugar on a Stick has recognized by the Fedora Project as an official Spin. This ties us more closely to Fedora's release cycle and gives us resources from their engineering and marketing teams, which extends the reach of Sugar on a Stick and makes the project itself more sustainable. In exchange, users of Fedora have access to an easily deployable implementation of the Sugar Platform; it's a great example of a mutually beneficial upstream - downstream relationship.

The biggest difference in v.3 of Sugar on a Stick has been in its release processes and engineering sustainability; it's now much easier for new contributors to get involved. We continue to move towards our long-term vision of bringing stability and deployability to Sugar's personalized learning environment, and invite all interested parties to join us.

If you'd like to contribute to the next version, due for release in early November, join us at our Contributors Portal at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick. All types of contributions are welcome, from the technical to the pedagogical, and we're happy to teach what we know and learn what you have to share.

I'd to thank especially Mel Chua and Peter Robinson who are greatly responsible for making this release as awesome as it is, as well as all people who were involved and contributed, like Tom Gilliard, who did large parts of the testing effort, but are otherwise too numerous to list here. Both the Sugar and Fedora communities did great work, represented in this product.

Fedora Mini has a mailing list!

By Sebastian Dziallas on March 24, 2010 4:57 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
If you feel that you want to talk Sugar, Moblin, Maemo or anything in that regard, there's a new place for that: the Fedora Mini mailing list. See you there!
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