[sugar] Impressions of Sugar's appeal to technical users (was: Supporting desktop applications, extending the EWMH spec)

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 02:52:09PM -0400, Erik Garrison wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 05:01:41PM -0400, Michael Stone wrote:
> > My impression, based on historical conversations with the parties
> > involved is that there are a bunch of hackers who feel that we did
> > ourselves a disservice by dropping _so much_ backwards compatibility,
> > specifically with Unix filesystems and desktops, in exchange for
> > cool ideas. The feeling is that had we traded compatibility for features
> > less aggressively then there would be many more hackers available to
> > help write the features since there would be many more hackers who felt
> > it was possible to live within Sugar.
> > 
> > This is just an impression, however.
>  
> For what it's worth, it is also my impression.  I have heard similarly
> from virtually all technically-oriented parties involved.  I have heard
> echos of this from less technical users (e.g. teachers who are confused
> by the behavior of the journal).

As an outlier, it seems, I found it interesting to explore the
different views and apps^Wactivities and wasn't put off since I didn't
expect a "normal" laptop experience straight away.  I get annoyed by
most GUIs pretty quickly, but with Sugar/Browse/Read + Terminal I
have, doing the standard Internet-kiosk type stuff I find myself doing
away from home, few annoyances that aren't generated by non-Sugar
limitations (keyboard, distro choices like evince/gnash).

I'm being very modest in my GUI expectations, but I've rebuilt kernels
(and modules/initrd) a number of times (3hrs with my - undoubtedly
slow - SD card) and muck about with gcc and git a lot, so I wouldn't
say I exactly fit the profile of a minimally demanding user.  I found
it interesting to work out how to restore items from the various
datastore<xxxx>/ directories into the current journal (thankfully not
necessary any more!).

> Erik

Martin

PS - I think these impressions are quite valuable for both historical
context and future direction: however people might feel tempted to
dismiss criticisms as vague or outdated, they need to be considered when we
tout and improve Sugar or the OLPC distro.

PPS - I realized in changing the subject that perhaps the "hackers" and
"technically-oriented parties" whose impressiosn were mentioned are
being assessed as (prospective) activity authors more than "technical
users" or sugar hackers.  This might be useful to clarify.
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