Sugar & XFCE

[Carlos Nazareno]

Hi all.

OLPC dev considering the support of XFCE in future builds is music to my ears.

After getting to experience hands on an actual XO machine running
Sugar a few months ago, I encountered the following issues:

1) The Journal / lack of a real file manager:
a) accumulation of too many no longer needed journal entries over time
which makes usage difficult
b) the flat file/listing heirarchy, which makes organization a bit
unwieldy -> resulting in hundreds of "unreadable/unusable" entries if
you stick in an SD card with browser-based content containing hundreds
of HTML
c) the difficulty in transferring multiple files, requiring the
terminal or MC to do extensive file transferring

2) Apps need to be sugarized.
Before I was able to actually try an XO hands-on, I had it in my mind
that OLPC was going to show the world how fantastic linux was
especially because there were thousands of fantastic apps already out
there that could be run by just downloading and slapping them onto the
XO.

Sadly, this is not the case because of the need for everything to be Sugarized.

It's difficult enough finding enough linux-based content
contributors/authors/developers on the same scale as for platforms
like windows. The added step of needing to sugarize applications and
not conflicting with rainbow security is a double-whammy. Add to the
fact that a lot of the authors contribute on a volunteer basis, and
not as paid developers.

We have to make the process of developing apps/content for the XO much
friendlier.

3) Vector graphics and the animated frame transitions cannot be kind
on the processor.
>From my experience as a flash developer, I know that rastering vector
graphics is more processor intensive than painting bitmap sprites
onscreen. Couple that with the XO's high resolution and you have more
work cut out for the CPU.

These days, 433MHz may seem unusable to the average Moore's
law-spoiled user, but it was more than enough for me who grew up on a
4.77MHz 8088 as a kid (yeah, that's nothing to you guys over here who
are older :P), a Pentium 166 MMX with 64MB RAM in college during the
late 90s, and then an AMD K6-2 500 w/ 256MB RAM as my primary
workstation during the early 2000's.

That K6-2 500 w/ 256MB RAM's specs are practically the same as the
XO's and performs more or less the same as proven by this circa 2003
experiment of mine: http://www.object404.com/lab/aquarium.php -- it
runs at practically the same speed on the XO as my aforementioned K6-2
Win98 rig

The main difference was that back then in 2003 on my K6-2 Win98 rig, I
was running the Flash MX IDE, a text editor, the Opera 6 browser with
about 20 browser tabs open, Winamp and that CPU & Memory hog: Norton
Internet Security (antivirus + firewall) simultaneously.

Barring virtual memory/swap space I don't see any reason why can't we
get similar performance out of the XO.

*********

Back on topic, I'm really thrilled that OLPC core is considering the
mainstream support/usage of environments like XFCE on the XO, as
opposed to it being relegated to unsupported hacking.

Sugar is fantastic, but I feel that the XO is not being used to its
full potential because Sugar is meant to be used in a specific context
with a much narrower scope than normal laptops and targeted towards a
very low age demographic.

Anyway, really I hope this proposal to support an alternative UI like
XFCE pushes through.

I really believe that with more traditonal desktop environments on the
XO, entities that previously required the the support the Windows
environment as a precondition for ordering XO units can be shown that
the same functionality that they require from windows can be fully
achieved by a linux environment (firefox, thunderbird, open office,
etc), and thus deliver the linux adoption coup that so many people
hoped OLPC would provide.

Now that alternative systems like the Deep Blue UMPC
http://www.ilikeblue.net/products/umpc.htm (1GHz Via processor, 1GB
ram, 40GB HD)
can be had for about $200 ($240 with WinXP) brand new in places like
here in the Philippines, I think OLPC needs to re-evaluate its current
direction in order to stay relevant in places where access to
electricity is readily available.

Delivering laptops to less-privileged students in more developed urban
areas (where efficient power usage is less of a concern) may not sound
as romantic as deploying them to infrastructure-poor remote rural
environments, but these places are no less relevant and laptops can
serve as an even more effective force multiplier because proper
support and infrastructure is more readily available.

Best regards,

-Naz

-- 
Carlos Nazareno
http://www.object404.com

interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
naz at zengraffiti.com