Installing Activities

You can install new and different Activities, which you can download and install from a web site, your school server, a USB storage device, or an SD card.

There are two ways to install new Activities:

Use the Browse Activity to download an Activity and then use the Journal Activity to install it.
Use the Terminal Activity to install an Activity directly from a USB device with a typed command.

Installing from a web site

1. In the Home view, click Browse.

startbrowse_1_1

2. Click on the Activities link in the middle of the page (or goto http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All.).

Note: Not every Sugar Activity is linked from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All. For example, the GCompris collection is found at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/GCompris.

3. On the Activities page, look for a new Activity to install. (In the example below, a Jigsaw Puzzle Activity is installed.)

wikilaptopActivities

4. Click the link to the file that you want to install. (Activity files usually end in ".xo".)

jigsawxo

5. You may be taken to a second page. Click the link to the file to begin the download.

versjigsawxo

6. During the download, you can "Cancel" or "Continue" browsing.

download_in_progress

7. When the download is complete, click "Show in Journal". (If you click "OK", you can continue browsing and finish the installation from the Journal later.)

download_open_in_journal

8. You'll be taken to detail view in the Journal.

9. Click on "Start" to launch the Activity. The Activity will start and be installed. It will be included in the list mode of the Home view.

journal_start

Enjoy your new Activity!

jigsawpuzzleactivity

Note: If you didn't install the Activity at the time you downloaded it, you can install it by opening the Journal (click the Journal icon on the Frame) and then opening the detail view of the Journal entry (click the icon on the right side of the entry).

Proceed from Step 8 above.

Installing an Activity from a USB storage device

1. Insert the USB device.

2. Start the Terminal Activity from the Home view.

3. At the prompt, type:

sugar-install-bundle /media/<USB device name>/<filename.xo>

(Substitute the actual name of the USB device in place of "<USB device name>" in the command, and the actual path and filename of the .xo file in place of "<filename.xo>".)
Sugar installs the Activity.

Tip: To determine the name of your USB device, you can go to the Journal Activity and read the name from the icon in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Installing a set of Activities

Activities are downloaded separately from the base Sugar user interface. To install a set of Activities on an OLPC XO-1 laptop:

1. Download dev.laptop.org/~mstone/customization-2.zip.

2. Unzip customization-2.zip onto an empty USB device.

3. Create a directory called "bundles" on the USB device.

4. Download the activities .xo and .xol files that you want to include. (A sample set of Activities is found at wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_bundled_activities#G1G1_deployment.)

5. Copy these .xo and .xol files into the bundles subdirectory on the USB device.

6. Shut down your XO-1 laptop.

7. Insert the USB device into your XO-1 laptop.

8. Start up the XO-1 laptop. The set of Activities from the USB device are installed automatically.