Ubuntu Sugar Remix with a Working Browser!

Ubuntu Sugar Remix (USR) took a big step closer today to becoming a classroom ready computer learning environment thanks to the fine work of Matt Gallagher.  The USR that installs from the current Ubuntu 10.10 repositories lacks a usable web browser - a flaw which renders it not ready for classroom use.  Thanks to Matt, the full featured browse activity is now packaged and ready for installation from his Personal Package Archive (PPA).

Canonical makes community developed projects like this dead simple to use.  Matt wanted me to warn anyone reading this that these packages are unsupported and should only be used by folks whose primary interest is using Sugar on Ubuntu, since there may be issues doing a distribution upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 with them installed that could possibly break your system.

If your still interested after that warning, here is how I will be installing USR on Ubuntu 10.10 machines from now on:

From a command prompt, run:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mattva01/ppa

This adds Matt's PPA to your apt repository list.  After that, run:

$ sudo aptitude install ubuntu-sugar-remix

You now have a working USR environment complete with a working browse activity.

If you already have USR installed, you will be able to remove the broken firefox activity after adding Matt's repository and updating your packages.

Tomorrow Matt will be tackling getting our jabber server to work, after which we can realize our big goal for this year by testing Sugar collaboration between Arlington, Virginia and Los Chilamates, El Salvador...

Thanks Matt!