http://www.osnews.com/story/15149/Review_Syllable_0_6_1 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:08:13 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?141910 http://osnews.com/thread?141910 I always wanted to try it myself but I think you did it for me ;-) I didn't expect much from it because it's under developement but still, it looks cool.

But there's one thing that annoyed me: it uses Gnome's icons. I know it's stupid and very understandable because there are better things to do than making icons but it confused me alot Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rx182) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141911 http://osnews.com/thread?141911 What do I have to do to get listed on your list of alternative operating systems? Granted nobody but me probably uses it.

http://www.losethos.com

I'm buying a Pentium-D in a couple weeks and hope to get 64-bit code running and support 2 processors. Right now, it runs on a limited range of hardware, unfortunately. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141913 http://osnews.com/thread?141913 When you write an OS from scratch (well, close enough, based on a years-old incarnation of AtheOS), one of the problems is limited hardware compatibility. You shouldn't experience these problems in a VMWare image if they are DISTRIBUTING a VMWAre image, but I had better luck with AtheOS back in 1999/2000, so I know Syllable is capable of better.

I'm sorry your experience wasn't as positive, but the project itself is still extremely interesting, and it's one of the few viable alternatives out there today besides the four big OSes. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141915 http://osnews.com/thread?141915 Just because it exists doesn't mean we track it. There are literally hundreds of operating systems out there, our site doesn't report on all of them, just ones we feel our readers will be interested in learning more about.

Please try to keep your comments on topic. This is not a forum for grousing about OSNews. That's what the Meta Blog is for. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141924 http://osnews.com/thread?141924 First of all, thanks for taking the time to review Syllable.

Now, just to make it clear, the VMWare image is semi-official, as is the LiveCD. The only official distributions of Syllable are the downloadable ISO image or the Premium CD we sell via. Lulu. Over the years various people have produced various pre-packaged versions of Syllable for VMWare and VirtualPC.

The drawing issues experienced are bugs in the VMWare video driver, which we hope are all now fixed in CVS so future releases of Syllable should work much better on VMWare. The issue with rebooting to change network settings is also a known bug; in fact, you've finally shamed me into going off and fixing it as soon as I've written this. The crash bug in Whisper was resolved and I've since released a new version of Whisper & the fix for the crash is in CVS; again, this will all be available in the next release so Whisper should just work.

The GUI in Syllable is "sort of" 95% finished, but we havn't settled on a final design yet, so you may find that certain things are quirky or incomplete. These sort of things will be done before Syllable 1.0 is released, but right now we're really in the "Make it work correctly" stage of development[1]. We do of course need more developers, but then who doesn't?

[1]: My three stages of software development: #1 Make it work. #2 Make it work correctly. #3 Make it better. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141935 http://osnews.com/thread?141935 Shame: the #1 motivator of today's savvy coder. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JoeSchmoe) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141945 http://osnews.com/thread?141945 While I think virtualization can have some merits for some uses, one of which is playing around with different OSes minus the need to actually install, it's a horrible way to get an accurate feel for the quality of the OS itself. I've often seen folk have to spend a good deal of time fighting with quirks in the software (like vmware), instead of really getting to use the operating system itself. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141949 http://osnews.com/thread?141949 The web site directs you to http://www.lulu.com/syllable to buy the Premium CD to support the project and get more stuff that the downloadable CD. But they are still selling the old version. I've been ready to buy since it was released, but it's still not available. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141956 http://osnews.com/thread?141956 On syllable, the redraw issue is a serious problem, at least in vmware

The program menu arranging itself by the metadata on the file is cool and makes it very easy to rearrange. but there's two problems
1. if you open the file browser and right click on an app the file browser tells you the app has
System
->Internet
as an attribute, but if you want to add your own program or mess with the current layout the attribute is actually os::Internet, not system
2. unless i missed something (possible considering the quality of the documentation) you can only nest metadata 1 deep so you can't say have folders within folders in the appmenu Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (axel) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141957 http://osnews.com/thread?141957 That's probably true to some extent. However, I use vmware all the time, and I'm well aware of it's effects on hosted software.

Syllable has some great potential, but it's all rough edges and unfinished symphonies at the moment. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nadiasvertex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141958 http://osnews.com/thread?141958 On syllable, the redraw issue is a serious problem, at least in vmware

Not only when running syllable.For example on FC5 the yumex gui front-end to yum is a heavy redrawer once in a while. :-( Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141967 http://osnews.com/thread?141967 "This is the 3rd entry to our Alternative OS Contest"

I'm confused as to what you mean by this. I assume you mean the third submission you received; because I cannot recal ever seeing the First, which maybe will be posted later. Or did I somehow miss the first one?

Could you not mark contest entries clearly in the Featured list, or add a menu item to the page so we can easily get back to any of the previous articles when we please? This would be greatly appreciated, as it's good to compare and contrast these OSes Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141969 http://osnews.com/thread?141969 It's not the third we received, it's one of MANY we've received, and third of SEVERAL that we will publish, including yours.

We have featured two others thus far, you can find them here: http://www.osnews.com/search.php?search=alternative%20os%20... Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141971 http://osnews.com/thread?141971 That's exactly as I thought, thanks. I'll have to bookmark that link. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141985 http://osnews.com/thread?141985 Maybe I should have. I was able to install it on a Compaq Evo without any hardware issues. I didn't have any problems with redraw; in fact it was very snappy. The network setup did give me a couple of issues but it only took me about 10 minutes to resolve them. All in all, I thought it was a great little OS. Its main drawback, in my opinion, is lack of software. Sure it still has some rough edges but if I could run Opera, Java, and OpenOffice.org on it, I would use it in a second. Until then, I'll keep my eye on it. It's really quite impressive. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kiz01) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?141996 http://osnews.com/thread?141996 I cannot get it to boot on any system I have tried so far. I've only gotten it to work in VMWare. Even HaikuOS will boot without VMWare on at least one of my machines. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (CodeMonkeyOverlord) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?142035 http://osnews.com/thread?142035 Which versions of Syllable, on what hardware? What errors did you get? Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?142098 http://osnews.com/thread?142098 ...but a little short and lacking some detail. Not as good as the first (and I have yet to read the 2nd entry, I'll have to go back and find it).

Syllable progress does seem to be somewhat slow, on the other hand I have been waiting for "openBeOS" for many years.

When I tried Syllable on my "home-grown" pc (same one I tried out with SkyOS) that had a relatively standard MSI motherboard, 3com ethernet card, nvidia video card, it did not work. I don't have the PC anymore so I cannot be more specific, sorry. Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?142152 http://osnews.com/thread?142152 I'm the original author of the VMware video driver! I based i off of the XFree86 driver which was publicly available. The last time I touched it, I thought it was working properly. But it's been a number of years and I think the driver interface has changed? Anyways, I'm working for the man now aka Billy G so I can't really touch GPL code. Good to see that Syllable is still progressing =) Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (HerrDoktor) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?142178 http://osnews.com/thread?142178 What additional detail would you have wanted? Wed, 12 Jul 2006 04:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nadiasvertex) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?142180 http://osnews.com/thread?142180 I would have been more interested in what has not been implemented and why, what's needed to get there. Also a roadmap of what is to come in addition to a high-level review of options and performance. Wed, 12 Jul 2006 04:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments