Recently in SoaS Category

A whole bunch of Sugar Activity Updates is coming...

By Sebastian Dziallas on July 31, 2010 1:20 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
...to an F13 installation near you. Soon. We need a little feedback from you, though. Specifically for the following ativities.

Since they haven't been pushed to the testing repository, yet, you can grab the builds from Koji (the links are on each update's page) or wait a few days and then run yum --enablerepo=updates-testing sugar-*. We're particularily interested whether #1900 is fixed for you with the latest Read update and whether the other activities still perform as they should.

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in terms of creating Sugar on a Stick - and we have received reports about this - is that the instructions are either outdated or confused and the interfaces very wildly between different platforms and distributions.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.

Sugar Smolt is now in... Smolt!

By Sebastian Dziallas on July 10, 2010 6:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
I've been working on a Sugar GUI for Smolt as part of my GSoC. Thanks to Mike McGrath, this code is now part of smolt's next branch in GIT. I'm pretty well on schedule with that, given that next week, midterms are happening. You can either check the code out yourself already or wait for a new release coming out. We're also looking forward to including this code in the next iteration of Sugar on a Stick, where it'll help users to submit their hardware profiles more easily.

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.

500 Days of Summer: Week 1 & 2

By Sebastian Dziallas on June 4, 2010 4:52 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
GSoC has started and I'm working on improving Sugar on a Stick, as previously noted. We've just released Mirabelle (which you can download here and has a contributor portal now), so that a good chunk of time went into release preparations and a release recap. I also worked on creating a remix for the upcoming POSSEs.

However, one of the things I'm going to work on for Sugar Labs is the integration of Smolt into Sugar, for example allowing users to contribute to issue reports by attaching their hardware information easily. Here's a mockup of how it might possibly look like. More coming soon!


GSoC Sugar Mockup

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.

500 Days of Summer: Day 1

By Sebastian Dziallas on May 24, 2010 9:56 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Well, probably not exactly 500 days. But I have been accepted to Google's Summer of Code for Sugar Labs and am really happy to spend my summer starting today working on improving Sugar on a Stick.

500 Days of SummerSugar on a Stick will see it's version 3 release code-named Mirabelle tomorrow, jointly with the release of Fedora 13.

And so today mostly consisted of release preparation and last-minute testing of the RC3. I packaged updates for a couple activities, which have been submitted for testing and should be available soon. Please give them a try and either comment in Bodhi or using Easy Karma.

In the meantime, Mel did an overhaul of the main Sugar on a Stick wiki page, which is being turned into a contributor portal for this release.

(picture by Dan Terzian taken from Flickr under a CC-BY-SA license)

Here's a list of the activities that are going to appear in a Sugar Environment near you soon. Please give them a try!

I'm excited. Seriously.

By Sebastian Dziallas on February 6, 2010 7:58 PM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks
There's something in the air that's desperately needed for Sugar on a Stick and its future development: deployments - as a central pillar of its philosophy.

Caroline and Simon are already using it in Boston and Berlin and now there's a new one emerging. Mel and Lynne May are going to run a local deployment. In a way, this is going to lower the entry-barrier for other people interested in running deployments.

Mel's blog post has all the awesome details, so I'll just refer you there.

Now what can you do? As you've probably heard, Sugar on a Stick is going to become a Fedora Spin. This is important, because it's a significant part of the effort to make the whole SoaS project sustainable. So we need help especially concerning packaging and reviewing activities [1], to ensure a consistent user experience compared to the former releases. We've a wiki page and a tracking bug, as well as weekly meetings in #fedora-olpc on 1500 UTC.

Just stop by and introduce yourself - do so on-list.

[1] If you're new to packaging software for Fedora, you might be interested in skimming the logs of our recent Fedora Classroom session.

Fedora Classroom: Sugar Packaging

By Sebastian Dziallas on January 5, 2010 12:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
So you're interested in the Fedora Sugar effort? Awesome. Well, as promised, we're going to have a Sugar Packaging Session through the Fedora Classroom program this Wednesday. We'll be in #fedora-classroom, on 1500 UTC, so make sure to drop by. If you can, please have Gobby installed, which we'll use for collaboratively working on docs!

Thinking of contributing to Sugar?

By Sebastian Dziallas on December 30, 2009 1:30 PM | No Comments
Here's your chance! Join us for the upcoming weekly Fedora Sugar meetings in #fedora-olpc starting tomorrow, Dec 31 on 1500 UTC.

We're going to talk about packaging (especially Sugar Activities) and all kinds of stuff that helps us making the F13 Sugar experience better.

You don't know how to package things for Fedora? Don't worry, we've a Fedora Classroom session coming up on Jan 6 - more details here.
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