TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Sweet! $5 PC on a USB

Joe Maglitta | Date: 07-23-09 | Comments

�Sugar on a Stick� uses bootable open-source software developed for One Laptop Per Child to bring new life to old PCs, new netbooks and phones. It�s not just for kids any more.

Just in time for budget crisis season in schools, non-profits, families and other cash-strapped outfits� A spinoff of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort has released a USB bootable version of its popular open-source collaborative software that turns obsolete computers into spry portable PCs featuring 40 productivity and creativity programs, optional central server, and intuitive graphical interface. IT, business, developers, parents, teachers, volunteers, elderly � take note.

Introduced by Sugar Labs last month at LinuxTag in Berlin, �Sugar on a Stick� 1 .0 brings the Fedora-11 based OS developed for OLPC to a 1G USB drive. Creators hope the latest release will extend easy-to-use, low-cost computing beyond the one million school children in 40 countries who already use the Sugar learning environment

What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost," Walter Bender, former president of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project said in a recent piece in the MIT Technology Review. "It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines."

That�s an appealing notion, given the difficulty of meeting demand for school and home computers, especially in a bad economy, and the thousands of tons of toxic waste created by discarded PCs.

People, Let�s Work Together

What distinguishes Sugar Stick from other bootable Linuxes is a smart focus on collaborative creativity and thinking. Or �activities, not applications� as Bender says. Whether it�s creating a document, images, music, charts, drawings, Sugar presupposes several people will work together, and makes doing so easy and even fun. In school or business, that�s how much work really gets done (or should be).

Add in automatic backup, journaling, ability to collect and distribute group work, and the portability to run on Linux machines, Macs and Windows PCs (the latter with a "helper CD" to permit USB booting) � even mobile phones - and you have an offering attractive to any cash-strapped school (these days, sadly all too common).

Sugar learning environment � Detail of interface

But I�m even more intrigued by possible adaption to non-educational environments. After all, what we�re talking about here is essentially free, open-source collaboration and content creation software, easily usable by even the most novice user. It is a lightweight, proven global, multilingual (25) platform.

I�m not suggesting Sugar replaces commercial products. But it certainly could in some light-use cases, notably with sophisticated, challenged or busy users and in low-budget environments such as retail, non-profits, community centers, etc. Corporate trainers, including those in IT, should also take a look. There are neat junior programmer tools, such as a command line interface. Sugar�s ease of use, pretty colors and social nature are also naturals for sales people too. Remember, it runs on phones.

Bring Me Your Tired

What also makes Sugar interesting beyond the classroom is the new life and usefulness it promises tired machines. You might not be able to use that 10-year-old desktop brick, but with Sugar Stick, somebody somewhere certainly could. I�d love to see volunteers gathering and rehabbing old machines with Sugar and distributing them to needy users, maybe tutoring them too. Sugar Labs, a nonprofit association, is also looking for tech folks to help development. If you�re between jobs, or just starting out, helping out would be a productive and satisfying contribution to make.

For IT and application developers, Sugar offers a fresh look at creating and delivering and collaborative functionality in an easy way. Download a copy of Sugar and play around. You might learn something useful and be amazed at the functionality.

This morning after a roundtable discussion on virtualization I hosted in San Francisco I overheard one IT head ask another in semi-exasperation: �How do I get rid of all these old machines we�ve taken out of service?�
I didn�t get to him in time. But next time I know what I�ll suggest.