4 ms·

They could have just used or written something that introduced them to standard UI metaphors instead of giving them Sugar. Probably would have saved effort.

askvictor 5y ago
Is there anything that great about standard UI metaphors? Most of them are descended from designs when hardware and performance was severely constrained, and hand around because it's too hard to change everything for most people (touch devices like smartphones and tables are the main exception, but they were only just getting a foothold at that time). Given the opportunity (in this case, since the audience had little or no prior expectations of a UI), why not try something new?
- yeetaccount4 5y ago
  Because it works wells enough for education purposes and would help prepare them for computers that many of them would encounter eventually. Sugar was well intentioned wankery. You could have had special use case software for off the grid lessons, but giving them all a bizarro UI that wasn’t like anything anyone had ever seen before didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’d say it was one of the big reasons OLPC failed. Also, had they forked off of existing DE/WM around at the time it would have been less buggy and would have involved less effort on their part. Sugar dropped me to console more than once, and I don’t expect most students or their teachers knew what to do besides reboot and probably lose work at that point.
  - morganya 5y ago
    Interestingly, in Paraguay the kids who did use their XOs much at all generally installed another windowing system. There was a nice easy package that even not-very-tech-savvy kids could install, I think put up by a hacker group in Uruguay (I'd have to check my notes on that one) with instructions in Spanish, that also came with some simple videogames and a video/audio player. Sugar was really not designed for media consumption, and that's what interested many of the kids!

askvictor 5y ago

Is there anything that great about standard UI metaphors? Most of them are descended from designs when hardware and performance was severely constrained, and hand around because it's too hard to change everything for most people (touch devices like smartphones and tables are the main exception, but they were only just getting a foothold at that time). Given the opportunity (in this case, since the audience had little or no prior expectations of a UI), why not try something new?

yeetaccount4 5y ago
Because it works wells enough for education purposes and would help prepare them for computers that many of them would encounter eventually. Sugar was well intentioned wankery. You could have had special use case software for off the grid lessons, but giving them all a bizarro UI that wasn’t like anything anyone had ever seen before didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’d say it was one of the big reasons OLPC failed. Also, had they forked off of existing DE/WM around at the time it would have been less buggy and would have involved less effort on their part. Sugar dropped me to console more than once, and I don’t expect most students or their teachers knew what to do besides reboot and probably lose work at that point.
- morganya 5y ago
  Interestingly, in Paraguay the kids who did use their XOs much at all generally installed another windowing system. There was a nice easy package that even not-very-tech-savvy kids could install, I think put up by a hacker group in Uruguay (I'd have to check my notes on that one) with instructions in Spanish, that also came with some simple videogames and a video/audio player. Sugar was really not designed for media consumption, and that's what interested many of the kids!