http://www.osnews.com/story/17872/Symphony_OS_2007_Preview Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 18 May 2013 18:54:30 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?238351 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238351 "google gadgets as desklets" - I didn't know these could work on an Linux system. Considering the Symphony base is Ubuntu, does that mean there's a way to run them on Ubuntu itself? Gnome lacks a good desklet system (gdesklets doesn't have much, and while Jackfield is promising, it's stalled).

The mezzo design looks pretty nice! Tue, 08 May 2007 13:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zerohalo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238357 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238357 I'm really curious to see where that will go.

It's a really different approach for Desktops, I wish luck to this project! Tue, 08 May 2007 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238366 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238366 It looked really beautiful albeit a little rough on the edges. I see on their website that they are finally inviting more developers to join in. That will go a long way in resolving the QA issues. The google gadgets will be something interesting to see as well. Tue, 08 May 2007 14:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lu-Tze) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238483 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238483 From what I understand, the desktop runs a Mozilla layer allowing for web technologies to be utilized. It's not running Gnome itself, rather another desktop environment (which particular one escapes me at the moment) with the Mozilla layer running "full screen", as it were. Tue, 08 May 2007 17:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pseudo Cyborg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238502 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238502 This looks a beautiful and innovative desktop design. I like it and wish them luck on the project. Nice to see some new stuff, can't wait to try it in a VM. Tue, 08 May 2007 18:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (CrazyDude0) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238507 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238507 I think it will be more useful for a server than a desktop. Let say like plesk or friend.

I tried it and it just don't feel right for desktop use, maybe I'm getting too old... Tue, 08 May 2007 19:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sanctus) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238513 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238513 It's not a new approach. Microsoft tried it years ago with its Active Desktop or something like that, where the whole desktop and file browser and everything was tied to the IE's libraries and rendering engine.

For one thing or the other, it didn't work at the time, (no real productivity, unstability, crashes that would hang the whole GUI, etc).

Now with Ajax technologies and XUL, Flex, Silverlight, etc. we may see a come back of the "active desktop" paradigm... for better or worse. Tue, 08 May 2007 19:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (barspi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238514 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238514 Since the new version of Symphony is to be Ubuntu-based, will there be Ubuntu deb packages available for people who want to install Mezzo on Ubuntu? Tue, 08 May 2007 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pi314159) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238542 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238542 This did indeed run fine on top of Ubuntu as I documented here: http://fak3r.com/articles/2006/01/31/howto-mezzo-desktop-on-ubuntu

But I've been waiting to try with the new builds. I'll take a look now when the new one comes out, post over there if you have success, and perhaps we can put some debs together for Ubuntu 7.04. Tue, 08 May 2007 20:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fak3r) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238566 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238566 I can't say enough good things about SymphonyOS. Maybe if I could, the free software and web development communities would finally give this project the resources it deserves. SymphonyOS is a prototype for Web 3.0, a convergence between native and web programming environments. This guy is building a Linux desktop based on Firefox essentially by himself, despite major financial and personal limitations, and hardly anybody is taking notice. If Mozilla is really so keen on offline apps and bringing the web to the desktop, then they'd be wise to divert some of their $55M to SymphonyOS.

Active Desktop didn't take off because back then, the web was predominantly used for static content. It also failed because Microsoft couldn't foster and promote a community to bring interesting capabilities to Active Desktop. But the web has come a long way both as a platform and as a distributed development ecosystem. Let's bring AJAX, social networking, and mashing to the desktop. Maybe all of that Web 2.0 mantra will really start to pay dividends when it becomes a first-class citizen of our desktops. Tue, 08 May 2007 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238570 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238570 Active Desktop, IIRC, was also one of the key debates in the Everyone vs IE court case back in the day. Were they forced to maybe remove it for anti-competitive reasons? Tue, 08 May 2007 22:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (larwilliams) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238585 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238585 Is there a place to get it without using torrents? I think my university blocks torrent use. Wed, 09 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kop316) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238676 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238676 I believe the SymphonyOS desktop is called Mezzo. Wed, 09 May 2007 07:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DLazlo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?238930 http://www.osnews.com/thread?238930 The chief questions this OS raises are as follows:

1. Is the current GUI metaphor in need of replacement?
2. If so, is Web 3.0 a viable platform for a desktop environment?

Also:

3. Slax is more of a distro than SymphonyOS is at this point. Now that SymphonyOS is nothing more than an add-on for existing Ubuntu installations, would it be better served marketing itself through Canonical the way Xubuntu is? Wed, 09 May 2007 20:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snozzberry) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?239201 http://www.osnews.com/thread?239201 Not quite. Mezzo is the name of the UI, not what's actually rendering the desktop. I believe it's XFCE doing the rendering and filesystem browsing with the Gecko engine running at "full screen" as the "desktop" allowing for Widgets/Gadgets/etc.

Perhaps I should have said "Window Manager" instead. Thu, 10 May 2007 17:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pseudo Cyborg) Comments