Sugar (desktop Environment)

Sugar (desktop Environment)

Sugar is an free and open source desktop environment designed with the goal of being used by children for interactive learning. Developed as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, it is the default interface on OLPC XO-1 family of laptop computers, but also runs on most computers' hardware. It is available as a Live CD, as Live USB, a package installable through several GNU/Linux distributions, or on Windows and Mac OS through virtualization.

Sugar is now developed under the umbrella of Sugar Labs, a nonprofit spin-off of OLPC which began operating in May 2008. However, because Sugar is open-source software under the GNU GPL license, many of Sugar Labs' contributors aren't employees of either.

Unlike most other desktop environments, Sugar does not use the "desktop", "folder" and "window" metaphors. Instead, Sugar's default full-screen activities require users to focus on only one program at a time. Sugar implements a novel file-handling metaphor (the Journal), which automatically saves the user's running program session and allows him or her to later use an interface to pull up their past works by date, activity used or file type.