One Laptop Per Child Founder Says: Sugar as OS was ‘mistake’

I bought an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO during the first Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) campaign. It seemed like a good idea to donate one XO to some child somewhere in the world and get one for my own child. Here’s the thing though: While the XO’s Sugar OS interface might be designed for a child, I can tell you that mine did not like it right away. Like many children in industrialized nations, she was comfortable and familiar with Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Sugar’s OS’ oddball low-resoution icons just seemd too different and non-intuitive. I probably sounded like some kind of scrooge saying such things back then. But, apparently, I’m not the only one with that opinion. The OLPC project’s founder apparently thinks the same thing according to this ZDNet Asia article…

A laptop for every poor child

The sidebar to this article is titled: Sugar as OS was ‘mistake’

Nicholas Negroponte is quoted as saying: …the biggest mistake was not having Sugar run as an application “on a vanilla Linux laptop”. This would have been a great thing for Linux developers (Sugar OS is based on Fedora Linux) who could have contributed valuable apps for some lightweight X Windows interface. These apps, in turn, would have enhanced the value of the XO. As it is, the OLPC XO project kickstarted the netbook revolution we see around us now. Too bad the project hasn’t been able to participate in the revolution it started.

Via Liliputing: Negroponte: Sugar OS was OLPC’s biggest mistake

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