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The ‘$5 PC’: Will OLPC-related USB stick software include FBReader? And could e-book app devs use same idea?
June 24, 2009 | 9:52 am
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By David Rothman
“The open-source education software developed for the ‘$100 laptop’ can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to give aging PCs and Macs a new interface and custom educational software.” – David Talbot in Technology Review.
The TeleRead take: I wonder if the USB-housed software in time will include a Sugarized version of FBReader? Or other good e-reading software? What’s more, could mainstream commercial e-reader developers use the same USB concept to ease installation? Remember, a Net-connected PC can download and display books—potentially, with Kindle-style ease. Hello, Adobe?
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Comments:
I really like the idea of having e-book software as part of the open-source ed package. Whether it is FBReader or some other app is a question for discussion (does FBReader do ePub? Whatever they use should).
It should include FBReader because the default reading application of Sugar (called Reader) is only a very unsophisticated PDF viewer (based on Evince).
I had a hard time trying to read with Reader. No border clipping, horrible paging …etc it is just not in one leage with FBReader. Now, I know that PDF is hard to render for reading but they should have thought of that earlier and choose a different format to support.
Essentially, OLPC should have chosen FBReader for the reading application and sponsor work on a PDF plugin for FBReader.
Yes, Steve, FBReader does ePub as well as a bunch of other formats. You might check it out when you get a moment.
Thanks,
David
I successfully ran and used a complete Linux Ubuntu system off a bootable 8Gb USB stick for several months, and I am planning to use the same method for training computer students when the price drops a little further. The minor loss of speed is more than made up for by the fact that you have total control over the setup of the system. You’re not reliant on the goodwill and competence of whoever was using that machine yesterday.
If you need to change things on the fly, then you take those changes away with you on the stick, and the next user of the same PC is completely unaffected.
In ten years this will be the standard way to use computers, and big companies will be giving away USB sticks containing their own customised promotional operating systems. If you thought the OS wars were already hot, just wait!
AFAIK, FBReader is not truly “portable” and needs to be installed (at least the Windows version). Being open source, I’m sure someone could portablize it if they wanted. I run lots of portable apps from a thumb drive. Having a portable version of FBReader would be a nice addition.
The best, IMO, ‘PC on a stick’ around is Puppy Linux. It loads totally in RAM, because it’s so small, which makes it superfast. It also is aware of the limits on read-cycles on flash memory, so it can be set to save to the flashdrive only upon shutdown or when the user requires it. FBReader has been ported to Puppy.
Since FBReader is GPL licensed, it would seem that Sugar Labs would have no problem porting it over and including it on the distro. Write to Sugar Labs and ask them!
@David,
Unfortunately, FBReader doesn’t have versions for my 2 portable devices, my Win-based PDA, and my LG phone. (This industry needs better standardization… badly!) But if it plays so many formats, I’m all for it.
I think PDF is also a worthwhile format to support, if only because it is already so ubiquitous, and there is so much archived material in PDF out there.
There is already good progress on an epub reader for Read in Sugar: http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings/2009/06/18/read-and-epub-and-beyond/ which also includes potential OPDS support.
One thing to keep in mind is the purpose of OLPC and Sugar, and how vital collaboration is to it.
An ideal ereader on Sugar/OLPC would be one with a sidebar so any friends in your area could look at the book with you, share notes, highlighted areas, and discuss it.
So one student reading his text, finding a section that puzzles him, messages his pal. The pal sees the exact section, with the passage highlighted, and in maybe a sidebar the first student’s comments and questions.
This is all part of ‘students teaching students’ which is at the core of the OLPC educational philosophy. The classroom is expanded in area and time; whenever any students are studying, they are ‘in class’ with all the other students also online, showing up in the groups on the Sugar home page.
There are of course ‘cloud’ solutions that approach this sort of collaboration, but OLPC is aiming at areas where the internet might well be out of reach — but your fellow classmates are available.
FBReader already runs fine on Sugar. And there are readers are developed by the Sugar Labs team. Since all this is available for normal users with PCs, you should try it guys.
Bastien, that’s excellent news, thanks. I use FBRreader on an XP netbook. But what’s the URL of a special version that will work under the Sugar environment, if such a creature exists? Or are you talking about a PC version intended for Sugar-related use? That still leaves open the issue of whether FBReader will be on the USB stick. I’d also be curious how the features of the Sugar Lab readers compare with FBReader. And can any SL readers read books in the ePub standard? I get the impression that Read cannot.
Thanks,
David
FBreader can be installed under Sugar with the “yum install fbreader” command. Maybe it will be included in the list of default activities on Sugar on a Stick – I’ll make this suggestion. As for other ebooks-related activity, there are these two ones: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4035 and http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4039 – the first one is really oriented toward makeing Gutenberg ebooks readable on the XO, the second toward pictures-based ebooks. IMHO, FBReader stays the reader of choice for Sugar.
I forgot to mention this activity: http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/get-internet-archive-books
So is FBReader’s interface Sugarized? And is there an easier way than yum to install it? Meanwhile I hope that all OLPC-related readers can be made compliant with ePub. Best of luck on this to the Sugar people! David
The FBReader interface is not sugarized, it doesn’t offer collaboration and other Sugar-centric features. I will ping the community about this, thanks.
Great, thanks, Bastien. That was my point. To be most useful to the kids, FBReader needs a genuine Sugarized interface. There’s a difference between that and mere installation, alas. I hope you follow up with a nice strong ping. Get in touch with FBReader’s dev team and see what might already be happening. Keep us posted, and best of luck with your efforts! David
A somewhat experimental version of a sugarized FBReader which works on SOAS-Strawberry is at http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/experimental/FBReader-10.xo
It needs more testing and polish, but it does have features like sharing (you can share the book you are reading with your friends), etc.
To install, just download and run the file from Sugar’s Browse activity.