Tutorial on installing Sugar on Debian

Get Debian

Download the Debian 10 (Buster) ISO.

I suggest downloading the standard edition ISO because it is smaller and because the Desktop Environment will get removed while installing Sugar. Current standard edition for amd64 linked here.

Install the Debian ISO on a system or Virtual Machine.

Install Sugar 0.112-6 on Debian 10 (Buster)

# Update Debian repositories and install Sugar
sudo apt update

# Install Sugar, its dependencies
sudo apt install sucrose lightdm

Reboot and login to Sugar.
Done 🎉

Tutorial to login to Sugar is available here.

Install Sugar 0.117-3 on Debian 11 (Bullseye)

Let's set default package repository to unstable. This is because Sugar 0.117 and above are only available in the Debian unstable repositories.
eg. using the nano editor

# create a new apt config file
nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/my-default-release

# Add this line to the file, then press CTRL-X to save it
APT::Default-Release "unstable";

Update Debian and install Sugar

# Let's update Debian. Should update to Debian 11 (Bullseye)
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

# Install Sugar, its dependencies
# gcc-8-base is a dependency of Sugar 0.117
# libglib2.0-dev is a dependency of the Browse activity
# lightdm is a desktop manager which we will use to select Sugar while logging in
sudo apt install sucrose gcc-8-base libglib2.0-dev lightdm

Reboot and login to Sugar.
Done 🎉

Tutorial to login to Sugar is available here.

Post install

This part is completely optional. These programs help in debugging/developing Sugar.

# install multitail and ssh
apt install multitail openssh-server

Setup colorful Multitail logs (Makes it easier to identify errors and warnings)

# Paste the snippet into /etc/multitail.conf
# Or save as .multitailrc in the home directory

# Sugar
colorscheme:sugar
cs_re:green:DEBUG
cs_re:red:^(([a-zA-Z]*Error)|Traceback).*$
cs_re:yellow:^.*(Warning|WARNING).*$
cs_re_s:blue:([0-9]{10,}\.[0-9]{6,})
#

Now you can view logs with multitail using:

cd ~/.sugar/default/logs/ && multitail -CS sugar -iw "*ACTIVITY_NAME*" 1 -m 0

Make sure to replace ACTIVITY_NAME with the name of the Activity whose logs you are trying to view. eg. Pippy