Sugar is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

designed for interactive learning by children. It was developed by SugarLabs. Developed as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, Sugar was the default interface on OLPC XO-1 laptop computers. The OLPC XO-1.5 and later provided the option of either the

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

or Sugar interfaces. Sugar is available as a

Live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

, as

Live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

, and a package installable through several

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

distributions. Unlike most other desktop environments, Sugar does not use the "

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

", " folder" and "

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent ma ...

" metaphors. Instead, Sugar's default full-screen activities require users to focus on only one program at a time. Sugar implements a journal which automatically saves the user's running program session and allows them to later use an interface to pull up their past works by date, an activity used, or file type.

Design principles

Sugar has the objective of being suitable for even inexperienced users but provides more advanced facilities for the more experienced. The project's stated goal is to "avoid bloated interfaces", and "limit the controls to those immediately relevant to the task at hand.". Applications run full screen, double-clicking is not used, and menus show icons. Sugar is written in Python, an

interpreted language In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An inter ...

, and can be modified by users with programming experience. Desktop environments used by many operating systems are written in

compiled language Compiled language categorizes a programming language as used with a compiler and generally implies not used with an interpreter. But, since any language can theoretically be compiled or interpreted the term lacks clarity. In practice, for some lan ...

s such as C.

Software components

Applications developed by Sugar Labs are very pragmatic which offers several opportunities to avail which enhances the skills and makes them dexterous in their field
Sugar Activities
include Turtle Blocks 3D, Ruler, Recall and many more.

Hundreds of learning activities for Sugar can be downloaded from the Sugar Activity Library. Additional activities are available from third parties, such as the Project Ceibal portal in

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

History

In May 2006 Sugar's developers described it as primarily a "tool for expression," and plans were in place to include

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

and

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

features. Since May 2008 Sugar has been developed under the umbrella of

Sugar Labs Sugar Labs is a community-run software project whose mission is to produce, distribute, and support the use of Sugar (software), Sugar, an open source software, open source desktop environment and learning platform. Sugar Labs was initially estab ...

, a member project of the

Software Freedom Conservancy Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. (also known as "Conservancy") is an organization that provides a Nonprofit organization, non-profit home, infrastructure support, and legal support for free software, free and open source software projects. The ...

. Some contributors are employed by One Laptop per Child and other related organizations, others are volunteers, in many cases associated with the

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, ...

. Contributors to the original Sugar platform included Marco Pesenti Gritti,

Walter Bender Walter Bender is a technologist and researcher who works in the field of electronic publishing, media and technology for learning. From the MIT Media Lab's founding 1985 through 2006, Bender directed the lab's Electronic Publishing Group. Previo ...

Christopher Blizzard Christopher Blizzard (born 1973) is a Developer Relations lead at Facebook. Formerly, he worked as an Open Source Evangelist at the Mozilla Corporation and has contributed to other open source projects, including Red Hat and One Laptop Per Chi ...

, Eben Eliason, Simon Schampijer, Christian Schmidt, Lisa Strausfeld, Takaaki Okada, Tomeu Vizoso, and Dan Williams.

Cross-platform

By early 2007 Sugar could be installed, with some difficulty, on several

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s, and in virtual machines on other operating systems. By mid-2008 Sugar was available on the

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

, and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

distributions of Linux; e.g., as of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), Sugar could be installed from the official Ubuntu universe repositories. By mid-2009 Sugar was also available on

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

and other Linux distributions. Sugar 0.82.1 was included in the OLPC system software release 8.2.0 for XO-1 laptops. Sugar 0.86 was released on September 30, 2009. Sugar 0.88 was released on March 31, 2010. Sugar 0.90.0 was released in October, 2010. There were three releases in 2011 and one in June 2012, which included support for the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer, RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for central processing unit, com ...

on the XO 1.75. Builds for OLPC XO laptops and the release schedule are available at OS releases. Sugar has been ported to run on Android,

Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued Open-source software, open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and Matchstick TV, dongles designed by Mozilla and exte ...

and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

using

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

under the project name "'' Sugarizer''"; with additional clients written for Web browsers supporting HTML5.

Sugar on a Stick

The Sugar learning platform for Linux is available as a USB-bootable Linux distribution ("Sugar on a Stick" also known as "SoaS") and as software components forming an installable additional desktop environment for most Linux distributions. It can be installed using the Fedora Live USB Creator, and can be installed onto a computer hard disk using the liveinst command from a Sugar Terminal or console. On June 23, 2009, Sugar Labs announced the availability for download of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry, which can run from a bootable 1 GB USB flash drive. On July 23, 2009, Recycle USB.com went live with a program to reflash used USB keys with the Sugar software and donate them to schools. On December 8, 2009, Sugar Labs announced the availability of Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry, which incorporates Sugar Release 0.86 and Fedora 11. Sugar Labs announced the availability of Sugar on a Stick v3 Mirabelle, which incorporates Sugar Release 0.88 and Fedora 13. Since Mirabelle, Sugar on a Stick has been a regular, semi-annual, Fedora Spin (official special-purpose version of Fedora); the a Spin using Fedora v22 was released on 26 May 2015.

XO-1 Usage

The OLPC XO-1 has a 1 GB NAND flash drive and 256 MB of memory. Because the flash-based hard drive is small, swap can only be added by using an SD card or a network block device. If too many activities are loaded at the same time there may be performance problems due to low memory or processor load.

Releases

XO releases

Sugar has had many XO releases.

Raspberry Pi releases

Sugar can be run on a Raspberry Pi. It is recommended to use SOAS to run Sugar on one. You can learn how to ru
Sugar on a Raspberry Pi
on Sugar Lab's website.

Sugar on a Stick releases

Strawberry

The Sugar on a Stick Strawberry release is based on Fedora 11 with the latest updates as of June 22, 2009. It features a Sugar learning environment, namely versio
0.84
including 40 Activities to enrich the learning experience. Hundreds of Activities are available for download from the Sugar activity library. This release includes

updates, Sugar features like ''View Source'' and file transfer, supplementary sample content, which is available in the Journal, and usability improvements.

Blueberry

Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry was released on 8 December 2009. It is based on F12 version of the Fedora operating system. It contains many features that improve the overall user and learning experience. Here is an overview of the most notable ones: * Sugar on a stick v2 Blueberry ships Sugar release
0.86.3
Its features are: *# Redesigned toolbars *# Better Gnash support for

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

content *# Improved wireless networking *# Support for tabbed browsing *#

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

file support for

e-books An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

*# Easier keyboard-configuration *# Easy way to update to the latest activities * ZyX-LiveInstaller: # In high demand was a software to install Sugar to a hard disk. Hence Sugar teamed up the zyx-liveinstaller developer to provide: #* Seamless installation of the personalized environment into your computer's hard disk; #* It saves changes made to Sugar; #* It does not require boot again and again. * Activities # It includes updates to the standard collection of Activities for children and many new ones. An example is TamTam activity suite, which takes the user on a journey through Sound and Music.

Mirabelle

Mirabelle was the 3rd release of the Sugar on a Stick project. It was released on 25 May 2010. * Sugar versio
0.88
features: # Support for 3G connections # Increased accessibility # Better integration with activity portal * Sugar on a Stick is now a Fedora spin. After two prior releases of being based on Fedora Distribution, Sugar on a Stick has been recognized by 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. * Contributing to Sugar on a Stick – The biggest difference in v3 has been in its release processes and engineering sustainability;

Mango Lassi

Mango Lassi was the 4th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 2 November 2010. It uses the Sugar versio
0.90

Coconut

It is the 5th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 9 October 2011. It uses a Sugar versio
0.92

Pineapple

It is the 6th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 8 November 2011. It uses a Sugar versio
0.94.1

Quadong

It is the 7th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 29 May 2012. It uses a Sugar versio
0.96.1.

ʻŌhelo ʻai

It is the 8th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 15 January 2013. It uses a sugar versio
0.98.2

Avocado

It is the 9th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 2 July 2013. It uses a Sugar versio
0.98.8

10

It is the 10th version of Sugar on a Stick released on 17 December 2013. It uses a Sugar versio
0.100.0.

Later versions

Sugar has stopped giving official names to SoaS releases, however, it continues to create new versions for each Fedora release. The latest version of Sugar i
0.112
Sugar has released its latest versions for the latest Fedoras
Fedora 23Fedora 24Fedora 25Fedora 26
an
Fedora 27

Sugar on Various Operating Systems

Sugar is available preinstalled on several

operating systems and among the most notable ones:
Fedora Spin SoaS
An edition of Fedora with Sugar. It is also officially featured by The Sugar Project's Wiki on it
Sugar on a Stick (SoaS)
web page..
Trisquel Sugar Toast
An official edition of Trisquel GNU/Linux with Sugar. It i
recommended
by The Sugar Project as per 2020.

Screenshots

Image:Sugar-home-view-0.82.jpg, Sugar Home View File:OLPC-Frame.png, Neighborhood Image:OLPC-GUI Sugar-home view.jpg, Sugar Home View from pre-0.82 releases Image:OLPC-mesh network-friends view.jpg, Sugar "Friends" View Image:Pippy.png, Sugar Pippy activity view. Image:XO-sugar.png, Sugar Home View with Frame from pre-0.82 releases Image:Sugar-viewsource.png, Sugar View Source Image:Sugar-journal.png, Sugar Journal

Sugarizer

Sugarizer is an

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and

based application that allows for using Sugar functionality on any device. It is available as both a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

and a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

. It offers a similar user interface and includes features of Sugar Core (datastore and journal), as well as many of the same Sugar activities.

References

* Some material was copied from wiki.sugarlabs.org, which is available under
Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license

External links

*
Sugar-on-a-Stick operating system

Sugar for Raspberry Pi
* XO releases
Sugarizer
{{X desktop environments and window managers Desktop environments based on GTK Educational operating systems Free and open-source Android software Free desktop environments IOS software Live USB One Laptop per Child Linux-based devices