Syllable 0.5.7 has been released. You can read the changelog here, and the download locations are here. “The biggest change in this release: everything has been recompiled against the new libc, and we have broken binary compatability through the removal of all the old libgui/libatheos/libsyllable versions. There are also some new drivers, new GUI classes, new bug fixes, and no doubt, new bugs.”
Nice work, seems alot of legacy stuff has been binned, because of newer lib’s and requirements.
Question: This has been refered to as a “Compatibility Breaker” release, are all fixes going to be in the 0.5.8 release only? or are we going to see like patches for 0.5.7?
0.5.7 is a normal release that just happens to be the last of the 0.5.x releases, and due to a problem upgrading Zlib we’ve had to break compatability one release early (We were planing on removing all the old GUI & libc libs in 0.6.0)
Bug fixes are, as always, an ongoing thing. Although I have stipulated that we *must* fix both AFS and the SMP bugs before the end of the 0.6.x releases, and hopefully we’ll have *all* the major bugs fixed by the end of 0.6.x’s anyway.
To be honest, we need a good filesystem engineer and a good kernel engineer with SMP experience.
Vanders, posting from 0.5.7 (Who can’t log in ‘cos the “LOGIN button” image map doesn’t work in ABrowse for some reason.)
Press Return / Enter it should submit the form
On-topic: thanks for the clarification Vanders, I’ll download the ISO tonight and try it on my Athlon64.
Vanders – visit /login.php and you can login without the button. Most browsers can handle it, but if not the login page does work with a standard
<input type=”button”>
A lot of the fixes regarding compatibility will also be a matter of fixing separate applications. We basically fixed all compatibility problems in the base system before the release; now it’s up to application authors to update their work.
Kaj
Great to see this ‘little’ OS progressing
state what it is in the description next time
Syllable is a small (physically, as well) OS based on the one-man AtheOS project, that thanks to Open Source, did not die when the original AtheOS developer lost interest. As I understand it, anyway.
From what I understand, like Linux it aims at POSIX compatability. Syllable seems to be able to use or fairly easily port Linux drivers (maybe because they’re FOSS?) Unlike Linux, the more featured version isn’t free ($10), and Syllable seems to have a different approach to the whole desktop question.
Syllable doesn’t aim for POSIX compatability. At least not 100%. The “More Featured Version” doesn’t contain anything you can’t download and add to the “Basic” version for free. It is priced at $10 so that you can buy it and support Syllable’s development.
The $10 version is the ‘Hey I’m supporting Syllable version’ basically.
I think these guys are doing a great job, never thougt AtheOS would get to where it is today. Keep up the good work!
On the other hand and IMHO the GUI needs an overall realy bad. I know it may sound a bit shallow and all, and i’m also aware that the devs are focusing their attention on the systems internals, but i think a GUI restyling, or a least a basic theming engine with a nice default would help to capture the public eye and perhaps even the atention of some developers… It would be a great PR move.
jm2c
“BOOOO” on theming. theming is of the devil.
I’ve tried multiple mirrors but can only get this via (legal) torrent at http://www.uwn.granerohosting.com/ddlxtreme/public/download.php?inf…
Yeah, the SourceForge mirrors have been very odd this week. I think it’s just one of those “We’re SourceForge so something has to be broken” things.
Nice work on the Torrent though, whoever that was!
> On the other hand and IMHO the GUI needs an overall realy bad.
Not yet. You don’t want to have a perfect GUI before other large-ish bugs are shaken out of the rest of the system (ex., as Vanders mentions above, AFS and kernel SMP). The GUI is what gives people the strongest impression of the overall quality of the system — spit and polish comes last.
No syllable releases I’ve tried since 0.5.3 or something around there have even booted – not even with special boot parameters – this release no different, from very old hardware to new hardware. Is this known?
Tried: IBM Aptiva PIII 500mhz, Fujitsu Siements P4 2.5ghz
You’d probably be better off posting this on the Syllable.org forums. There are some known problems with certain CD-ROM/DVD drives and the ATA[PI] driver, particularly when using ATA DMA with E.g. LiteOn drives.
It doesn’t boot in Virtual PC 2004. I would have liked to try it …
Did you check http://syllable.org/faq.php?cat_id=6&cat_name=Virtual%20PC“>… ? Specifically, you need to disable ATA DMA to get the CD to boot.
OK I added “enable_ata_dma=false” to the grub commandline sequence, and it booted.
The interface seems very slow (no dma, in a VM), so I couldn’t test a lot.
Tested with Syllable 0.5.7 LiveCD.
Over half the posts are people that can’t get it to boot.
Now what is this thing again, a way to run beos code or atheos code on linux, or what? I don’t think this question ever really got answered