3 ms·
Developed as part of the One Laptop Per Child. Uses python, so the desktop is interpreted & open for modification (not compiled). Sugar was so incredibly far
by jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Developed as part of the One Laptop Per Child.
Uses python, so the desktop is interpreted & open for modification (not compiled).
Sugar was so incredibly far ahead of the curve. Figma & multiplayer computing? Sugar was doing this in ~2007. Local-first software, where a class-room without internet connectivity could share a canvas & collaborate together: https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/collaborating.html https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/collaborating.html
The underpinnings were amazing. They used DBus for a lot of the activities to expose themselves programatically. To make things multiplayer, they used link-local XMPP to connect various DBus instances together. It was a brilliantly direct & straightforward & not-absurd way to take the FreeDesktop ideas & turn them into something connected & cross-system, without having to build a whole new stack. https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/doc/book/sect.tubes.dbus.html https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/doc/book/sect.tubes.dbus.h...
It's really easy to see all the ways Sugar and OLPC didn't accomplish their mission & to see how it didn't work. But people just pass over all the incredible competently resourceful tech choices that were made here. And seemingly no one has had the ambition to unleash FreeDesktop technologies again (also RIP Maemo). Heck, no one's made a local-first laptop ever again!
- RodgerTheGreat 3y agoSugar, and more generally the idea of using 2006-era Python to write an entire userland on a device with a pokey CPU and limited RAM, was a huge part of why OLPCs were unbearably slow to use. For all the hypothetical benefits it was a catastrophically poor decision that seriously undermined everything great about the hardware design of the XO-1.
- ZiiS 3y agoWorth being clear, this doesn't detract from it now, where it is plenty fast on far cheaper hardware than the XO-1.
- oven9342 3y agoso since 2007 and 2023, we must have scientific assessment on the benefits of using computers instead of books?