Uses python, so the desktop is interpreted & open for modification (not compiled).
Sugar was so incredibly far ahead of the curve. Figma & multiplayer computing? Sugar was doing this in ~2007. Local-first software, where a class-room without internet connectivity could share a canvas & collaborate together: https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/collaborating.html
The underpinnings were amazing. They used DBus for a lot of the activities to expose themselves programatically. To make things multiplayer, they used link-local XMPP to connect various DBus instances together. It was a brilliantly direct & straightforward & not-absurd way to take the FreeDesktop ideas & turn them into something connected & cross-system, without having to build a whole new stack. https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/doc/book/sect.tubes.dbus.h...
It's really easy to see all the ways Sugar and OLPC didn't accomplish their mission & to see how it didn't work. But people just pass over all the incredible competently resourceful tech choices that were made here. And seemingly no one has had the ambition to unleash FreeDesktop technologies again (also RIP Maemo). Heck, no one's made a local-first laptop ever again!
Uses python, so the desktop is interpreted & open for modification (not compiled).
Sugar was so incredibly far ahead of the curve. Figma & multiplayer computing? Sugar was doing this in ~2007. Local-first software, where a class-room without internet connectivity could share a canvas & collaborate together: https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/collaborating.html
The underpinnings were amazing. They used DBus for a lot of the activities to expose themselves programatically. To make things multiplayer, they used link-local XMPP to connect various DBus instances together. It was a brilliantly direct & straightforward & not-absurd way to take the FreeDesktop ideas & turn them into something connected & cross-system, without having to build a whole new stack. https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/doc/book/sect.tubes.dbus.h...
It's really easy to see all the ways Sugar and OLPC didn't accomplish their mission & to see how it didn't work. But people just pass over all the incredible competently resourceful tech choices that were made here. And seemingly no one has had the ambition to unleash FreeDesktop technologies again (also RIP Maemo). Heck, no one's made a local-first laptop ever again!