Is it alive?

[Christopher Sawtell]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 09:05, Marcus Denker wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 04:12:48PM +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> > 1) A live CD which somebody can just pop into a CD drive on a PC and boot
> > to get Squeak working. It does not matter what the underlying o/s is. A
> > possible example method is at:- http://www.knoppix.org/ which provides a
> > Live Linux CD. It would not be too difficult to replace the unneeded
> > window manager and applications with a Squeak system.
>
> Yes, it would be simple to build a Squeak-CD on top of Knoppix... but...
> it would only boot on a PC. Not on my Mac!

In principle anyway, I would think that it would be possible to do a similar 
act using the Knoppix code and a Linux distribution intended for the Mac.

> Slightly of-topic: Seeing Knoppix and Squeak mentioned
> together, Klaus Knopper did take some photos of our
> small Squeak booth at LinuxTag02, have a look at:
>
>  http://media.linuxtag.org/gallery/album02/agm
>  http://media.linuxtag.org/gallery/album02/agk
>  http://media.linuxtag.org/gallery/album02/agl

I wonder what the young girl in the blue cap thought of it all.

> Have you seen any issue of Tansel Ersevan's SqueakNews? This is a
> (commercial) CD-ROM based Squeak e-zine, done 100% in Squeak.

Yes it's totally amazing. Tragically the e-zine seems to have died.

> The first two issues (July/Aug 2001) can be downloaded as CD-images at:
>  http://www.squeaknews.com/download/index.html
>
> These CDroms are very nice: They simply work on all important systems (Win,
> Mac, Linux). And no setup is required.
>
> I especially like the  October 2001 issue "Powerful Ideas for the
> Classroom".
>
> > 4) Removal of the red cautionary-tale text screen which greets you on
> > starting up a 3.2 image. If you tell them it's difficult right at the
> > start, the masses will take off like scaled cats, never to be seen again.
> > Actually Smalltalk is difficult only if your mind has been horribly
> > corrupted by many years of traditional computer programming.
>
> Uhh... the Squeak you can download at Squeak.org is for experts only, "the
> Hacker release". The UI of that Squeak is not even close to one I would
> like to see for a Squeak that "normal" people should use.

Well I tried to use the netscape plugin a while ago and found that projects 
created with it were not portable at all between Linux and MacOS so I threw 
it away. Also I have a weekly lesson with a young genius and we found that 
the Squeakland version seemed to be rather badly emasculated, so I got hold 
of the "real thing". I'm glad to say that so far version 3.2 seems to be 
fully compatible between machines. I'm not compatible with a Mac though. 
Their infuriating habit of hiding every detail they can just makes me so 
cross.

> Did you know that Dilbert has started to develop with Squeak?
> Have a look at
> http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2812750020923.g
>if
>
> ;-)

I saw that. :-) Indeed!

-- 
Sincerely etc.,
Christopher Sawtell