[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Children want Sugar 0.84, for the wrong reason

[Bernie Innocenti]

On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 10:46 -0500, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 08:33 -0500, Gerald Ardito wrote:
> >
> >> By the way, how do you upgrade the XOs (we have XO-1s) to .84? This is
> >> a very big deal for us.
> >
> > We use a local variant of the F11-XO1 images by Stephen Parrish, signed
> > with the deployment keys.
> 
> How well is that build working, from a "let's use it in the field" PoV?

Depends very much on who you ask to.

Teacher / trainers:
  It deleted my stuff
  I can't learn it
  None of the new activities work
  We can't work any more with this new version
  This GNOME thing has many drawbacks
  GNOME prevents activities from working

Children: 
  Please install "colored windows"
  The new Sugar is faster
  How do I get to "piecito"? (little foot == GNOME)
  I like the screensaver
  ...many more...

If you ask me: our recent F11-XO1 builds have reached equal or better
quality than build 801, provided you disable automatic power management.

Activities still need some bug-fixing, but nothing serious. I filed a
bunch of bugs in the SL and OLPC trackers. I asked educators to send us
clear and complete bug reports every time they see something odd, but
all I've seen so far is distress calls, of course sent through private
channels instead of the ones I suggested :-)

I think this is all natural: non-technical adults tend to panic on the
idea to replace something familiar with something that will force them
to learn something new. This is the first time in their *lives* it
happens, so we should be understanding. In less than 2 months, they'd be
happy with this version and unable to use the old one.

Hopefully, they will complain a little less on the next upgrade to 0.86
and 0.88... Until they finally get used to the idea that software tends
to improve over time rather than getting worse.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/