[Trac #1053] OLPC needs a usable GUI (i.e. not Sugar)

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#1053: OLPC needs a usable GUI (i.e. not Sugar)
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 Reporter:  gnu     |        Owner:  jg       
     Type:  defect  |       Status:  new      
 Priority:  normal  |    Milestone:  Untriaged
Component:  distro  |   Resolution:           
 Keywords:          |  
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Comment (by AlbertCahalan):

 Oooooh, them's fighting words. :-)

 You're at least half right though.

 The whole "activities" thing is dumb. English-speaking kids will be in an
 environment where everybody else will use terms like "app" and "program".
 For the non-English-speaking kids, surely there are similar local terms
 that will be the norm. Perhaps the translators have already undone the
 error.

 Junking the normal Mac-style desktop (copied by Win95, GNOME, KDE...) is a
 very good idea. If you are running any apps, you can't see the desktop via
 any logical mechanism. The desktop really should be void of anything,
 optionally to be decorated by the user.

 Junking the task bar and/or virtual desktops was a poor idea. One might do
 well with one app per desktop; there would seldom be more than one task
 button on the screen. (thus retaining compatibility with stuff like the
 gimp)

 Full-screen, possibly excepting a task bar, is a good default. It's needed
 for a 3-year-old or a not-so-bright 4-year-old. It'll annoy a 10-year-old
 for sure. There should be a window manager to help uncooperative apps go
 full screen via a fat window border. Example: if an app is 1000x700, you
 get 100-pixel borders. (minus anything needed for a task bar) Perhaps
 metacity could be hacked to do this; there could then be an adjustment to
 free the older kids from the toddler interface.

 The collaboration may well go against human nature. My apps are mine! My
 data is mine! Mere communication is another matter of course; silently
 passing notes would go over very well.

 The Journal storage hasn't been documented all that well, so I'll avoid
 judging it much, but it sounds like a neat idea that will fail in real-
 world use.

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/1053#comment:3>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>