[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:  CTest
Component:  distro  |   Resolution:       
 Keywords:          |  
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Changes (by jg):

  * milestone:  Untriaged => CTest

Comment:

 I have *some* sympathy with gnu:

 But only some.

 Having a 9 and 12 year old (well, he turns 9 tomorrow), I've seen both my
 kids struggle with both conventional Windoze and Linux desktops.  Ages
 6-12 is our prime audience.

 Conventional desktops are fully usable by kids only after they are able to
 read decently well (at least in my experience).  This should  hardly be
 surprising, as they were designed for adult developed world office
 workers.

 Having dialog boxes of text they can't read pop up in windows that get
 lost *really* sucks, when you are a parent (or kid).  So Sugar is getting
 to a position where in fact for young children, once we have the
 performance nailed, I think it will be much better for those kids,
 particularly on our relatively physically small screen.

 On the other hand, there are applications which my 12 year old was
 experimenting by age 9-10 which exist on Linux that it is unlikely we're
 going to get "sugarized" to be one window at a time any time in the
 forseeable future.

 We have one way to run these now (by running an entire environment inside
 an Xephyr X server); the problems with this approach is both memory usage
 and lack of *any* integration when it comes to cut and paste, and
 encouraging people in those application communities to start taking our
 collaborative environment seriously (which we certainly want everyone to
 do). As kids get older they graduate to more serious applications: just
 this morning, my daughter just turned twelve was crowing that she could
 now duplicate everything she'd seen in a Photoshop tutorial in the Gimp).

 I don't think this "solution" of a full environment embedded in a sugar
 activity is adequate in the long run.

 Another approach is to use a different window manager than Matchbox, and
 have sugar and sugar applications sent appropriate window manager hints to
 get the current behavior: but we could then still run existing
 applications as well on the one X server and have fuller integration with
 applications in general.  This is the approach I personally believe we
 need to follow, while not losing sight of the approachability I've seen
 that conventional desktops so badly fail at.

 Walter Bender also would like to see better provision for existing
 applications in our environment: John, do you want to spend some time with
 me to see if we can "have our cake and eat it too" (which I believe is
 possible)?

 Until the details of how to do this is worked out, and we know exactly
 what is needed to get there, I don't want to disturb the Sugar development
 team one bit.

 So I'll throw down the gauntlet to gnu: let's understand what is needed to
 have both worlds meet more gracefully.
                                  - Jim


 P.S. You are also welcome to put your UI of choice on the system in any
 case; this is an open platform.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/1053#comment:9>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>