OStatic

Even as a child, I knew that Pixie Sticks were just trouble. The paper tubes loaded with colorful yet mysteriously flavorless sugar weren't particularly tasty, and too many of them led to mom and dad either threatening to pull the car over or hinting ominously about what would happen if they had to tell me again. Parents today know that in addition to the traditional side effects, Pixie Sticks aren't terribly good for USB ports, either.

That's not the case with the other sort of Sugar. Sugar, the kid-friendly open source desktop that was featured first on the OLPC XO laptop is now available (in a beta release) as a liveUSB image. The Sugar on a Stick environment is powered by Fedora 11 and features familiar Sugar desktop applications and functions, as well as new educational and collaborative tools, such as the InfoSlicer online content editor, remixer, and delivery application.

The talk Nicholas Negroponte gave at the TED Conference this weekend ignited discussion on several fronts. Liz Gannes at GigaOM reports that Negroponte credits the OLPC for the rise of the netbook market, and CNET has additional information about OLPC's plans to open source the XO laptop's hardware schematics.

Would netbooks exist now if the OLPC hadn't announced its plans for a $100 laptop a few years back? Probably, but it's not unreasonable to imagine that the interest shown by the general public in the $100 laptop concept drove commercial manufacturers to develop and produce powerful-yet-inexpensive laptops faster, and in greater numbers, to a larger target market than they would have initially considered.

The other area Negroponte discussed -- opening the XO hardware -- doesn't initially, perhaps, seem as entertaining to debate as the netbook claim. The implications of open sourcing the XO hardware design are well worth consideration.

PCWorld reports that the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Group has confirmed that Amazon will have XO laptops for sale on Monday, November 17th. The XO laptops at Amazon are sold in the same manner as they were initially at the OLPC site, with a $400 donation securing a laptop for the customer, and a laptop for a child in a developing country. This donation (or at least the portion used to purchase the laptop for the child) is tax deductible.

OLPC's vice president of software engineering, Jim Gettys, said that the XO laptops sold through Amazon will be Linux based (though some countries are opting for Windows versions), and that there is some talk of selling the XO through Amazon in other countries.

Last Thursday, the OLPC Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the availability of the Fedora Sugar Spin LiveCD. This release incorporates the Sugar Desktop Environment in to a Fedora liveCD.

It's an easy way to try out the Sugar environment and associated applications without touching your existing system.