Now you can get OLPC's Sugar on a stick

The OLPC (one laptop per child) XO-1 interface is now available on a USB stick.

Sugar Labs, responsible for building the low-cost device's OS, has released it online for loading onto any USB flash drive greater than 1GB, and will allow it to be used on "any PC or netbook", it said in an announcement.

Called "Sugar on a Stick v1", Sugar Labs hopes it will help spread the use of the OS in classrooms, without the need for the OLPC device.

An IDC analyst said earlier this year, the OS would be one of the OLPC's more attractive aspects vendors would be interested in copying for the netbook market.

It is based on the Fedora Linux kernel and can be booted from the memory stick, without needing to be installed over the hard drive's existing OS.

According to Sugar Labs, its OS is used by almost a million students aged five to 12 in some 40 countries. Its social-oriented interface recognises other Sugar-based PCs around it, and interacts with them without the need for an internet connection.

Sugar Labs was spun off a year ago after Walter Bender, now its executive director, left the OLPC initiative to start up the not-for-profit spinoff.

Intel's Classmate PC is another offering, which analyst firm, Gartner, has labelled more effective in driving the adoption of PCs in emerging markets' educational institutions because of its "classroom-focused approach". This includes networking infrastructure, teacher training and curriculum materials.

Original article: Sugar interface, no OLPC necessary from ZDNet Asia