NewsForge reviews Syllable, and concludes: “Overall, I was pleased with Syllable’s speed and ease of use. Most of its drawbacks come from it not being finished yet. The glitches were minor and the lack of features in its applications come from them not being finished yet. I feel kind of guilty complaining that a browser that’s on version 0.4 isn’t full-featured enough, but for now, these issues prevent Syllable from being useful as a full-time desktop OS.”
“I’ve never seen responsiveness like that out of a stock install of any other desktop OS.”
I guess this guy has never used BeOS/Zeta/Haiku.
DSL and the like are also pretty fast if you run them entirely in ramdisk.
I cannot compare it to BeOS/Haiku though, since I only ran Zeta from some live CD and was not really impressed. It was reading files from the CD way to often, I think.
But I’m sure a real install would have been a lot more responsive.
Also check Con Kolivas’ patches if you want maximum responsiveness: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/
It’s still not hard realtime but it’s pretty fast nevertheless.
That being said I suppose Haiku will still have an edge over linux because it is by design a responsive Desktop OS and (if I remember correctly) massively multithreaded.
@airjrdn:
There is currently no free CD on Yellowtabs page but you can get one here:
http://download.freenet.de/download.php?file_id=7560&download=ZETA~…
If you are confused because it’s German:
Just click at the button “Download starten” within the first paragraph.
That’s where I got my live CD from and I believe it’s legal.
Edited 2006-08-23 19:51
When Linux integrates proper Real Time support, its desktop performance should hopefully improve massively.
That said, for anything other than multimedia playback and software installation, SuSE 10.0 out of the box already beats the performance hell out of the most commonly used desktop OS, particularly if you load software to stop that OS looking like sh**.
*cough* Don’t tell me you found 10.0 usable! *cough*
It’s crap compared with 10.1 imho.
Regarding linux and realtime:
Linus has stated several times that linux won’t be realtime (that is: the main tree) because that’s too much overhead for a very small gain in userbase…
Regarding realtime: I’m now hearing different. Time will tell, I suppose.
Re Suse: a lot of people seem to agree with me about 10.0. I haven’t tried .1 because a lot of people on the mailing lists are unhappy about it. .2 is supposed to be a hell of an improvement, however.
Yeah, I found 10.0 to be WAY better than 10.1. See my previous comments here:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14892&comment_id=134246
Thanks for the link and info.
The triumph of Syllable lies within her sourcecode. Take a look at the CVS snapshot. (http://syllable.cvs.sourceforge.net/syllable/syllable/) It’s remarkable how small the operating system, its components, and applications are. Look at its file browser application (system/apps/desktop/file_browser). It was implemented in only several hundred lines of code.
Oh, and regarding the whole debate over responsiveness: what about xfce? Although I’m on a new computer, my desktop loads in 2 seconds. Applications load instantly. KDE takes, what, at least 10 seconds to start? Konqueror another 3-5 seconds. xfce definitely offers an alternative for a usable, but extremely lightweight desktop.
Yeah, but Zeta isn’t free that I’m aware of. Are there versions of these available for free download to play with?
Zeta released a LiveCD of Zeta 1.1 at one point, but it’s hard to find, and was somewhat crippled to prevent copying it to a hard drive.
BeOS R5 PE is available – in several flavors in fact (I recommend BeOS Max Edition v3b1 (find on bebits.com)
Haiku is FOSS, and currently testable in fact… but very pre-alpha (moreso than Syllable).
If anything, Syllable has its roots in BeOS, as AtheOS also borrowed concepts from BeOS in its design. So there isn’t much surprise that Syllable is similar to BeOS in this respect.
“Haiku is FOSS, and currently testable in fact… but very pre-alpha (moreso than Syllable). ”
Are you sure of this?
I think Haiku will be *ready to use* (for testing) in a month or two..
And how do you know this?
Simply watching the Haiku CIA ( http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/OpenBeOS ), you see the progress made in every OS piece.
More or less, I think we will get networking done for Christmas. At that time, we will surf the web using Firefox, download songs and play them in the Media Player.. All with a good amount of stability..
It will be alpha, anyways, but “usable” alpha.
I dont think Syllable will be more advanced than Haiku at that moment.
The first one to properly support IMAP will reach the “usable” state for me first.
Haiku’s “Mail Daemon Replacement” (including the BeMail application) supports IMAP, but I don’t know whether it does it “properly” or not.
http://www.bebits.com/app/2289
The M.D.R. was IIRC one of the first parts of Haiku to become available as a drop-in for the BeOS counter-part, in 2001. The remake of the Haiku netstack is one of the last few major blanks that are being filled in to be on par with BeOS R5, feature-wise.
I don’t know whether or not Syllable’s Whisper supports IMAP. I tried looking at Vander’s site and on Kamidake but found nothing on IMAP. You could probably get by with Pine or something, if you had to. Many unix shell apps compile fine under Syllable. Syllable had (still has?) a leg up on Haiku in the “configure/make $unixsoftware” department. Syllable’s dir structure is a little more unixy, which helps. Personally I think it’s an ugly mess, but maybe they’ve changed it since the 0.5.x something release I tried last.
Haiku’s “Mail Daemon Replacement” (including the BeMail application) supports IMAP, but I don’t know whether it does it “properly” or not.
MDR is a great app, but doesn’t support IMAP correctly. The advantage to IMAP is having all mail stored on the server. It defeats the purpose of using an IMAP server if the mail client pulls all the mail to the local machine, which is precisely what MDR does. In addition, MDR always crashes after downloading anywhere from 10-90% of the 23,000 messages and 550 folders I have on my IMAP server.
Then there’s seamonkey.. Which connects to the server, shows the folder and message lists, but won’t display any messages.
And, finally, Beam.. The best option simply because it doesn’t crash and actually displays messages. Unfortunately, it pulls all the messages to the client and only shows messages in the INBOX, not in any other folder on the server (at least as far I can tell).
Oh, and yes there is pine for BeOS (and, presumably, Haiku when it’s complete). No one should have to use a terminal to check the e-mail, though 🙂
Adam
Whisper doesn’t yet support IMAP but it has been designed with IMAP in mind. Someone expressed an interest in writing an IMAP mailbox plugin for Syllable, on the developers mailing list, but I have heard nothing since.
Although I may be changing my own mail-setup and start running imapd on a local server, so I’d have to add IMAP support myself if I did that.
You’re right though; a Pine or another curses-based mailer would probably work.
I’ve tried Puppy Linux and imho it’s miles away from DSL. Running DSL entirely from ram does not compare with Puppy lightning-fast speeds.
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/2.0.4730/1316; lt; U; ssr)
yes! I LOVE puppy. its extremely fast. I use it quite often. beats the crud out of DSL, imo
I have always found this to be a very interesting OS, it seems to combine the positive aspects of OSS with a true desktop focus. It is really exciting to see it getting to the point of being usable for day-to-day use. Many of his complaints are already being addressed, eg. Whisper is being rewritten from scratch and is supposed to be much improved.
I am not sure, but last I time I checked a couple of years ago, none of Syllable’s devs were using Syllable full time. If this is still he case, they would realize what this fine OS needs. Its all the little things that pile up and become annoying.
The project leader eats the dog food, for one.
Years ago you’re correct, none of us were using Syllable significantly. That’s changed. Certainly the “core” developers are using Syllable as much as possible. I can only speak for myself, but I try to use Syllable for everything I possibly can. I’m still not using Syllable full-time; there are some things I need to do that can not be done on Syllable yet, but Syllable is capable of taking care of most basic tasks such as email and web-browsing.
Obviously many of us develop on Syllable a lot, and Syllable has always been a self-hosting environment, so we use Syllable a fair amount.
I probably use Syllable for a good 30 hours a week in total. It’s not my one-and-only OS (yet) but it gets more use from me than Linux, now.
This OS has a very small, but very dedicated and intelligent team of developers. If you’re even thinking about wanting to help – go ahead and indulge yourself! The project is definitely friendly, and the devs know the OS inside and out and are willing to answer questions, and love help.
I think Syllable is definitely a great alternative to Linux but it still has a long way to go,I tried the live CD ,and thoug ht it was rather nice but it didn’t have a ppp daemon or many apps (i only have dialup here so I coulddn’t go online)I’m still using BeOS as my main desktop OS but it is nice to see something aas fast coming up to replace it,Haiku is still in it’s infancy,Zeta is pretty much a joke,because it seems to be a duct taped version of Dan0 with some scary overtones(libzeta.so for instance..WTF is that?)Hopefully it will continue to grow,because Linux is just WAY too slow for me
*sigh* You’re one of the tiresome people who wonder if yT had the “source” aren’t you? Yes they did. They had the source. There you go.
Have you used Zeta since R1 came out?
Zeta is not a “duct taped” Dano (What is Dan0 by the way? If you mean Dano0, then say Dano0. R5.1 was never called “Dan0”.) Zeta is actually fairly well put together (after the RC’s that is.)
Zeta is by no means perfect. Zeta is not as nice to use as BeOS R5 because they’ve messed with a few things, but Zeta R1.2 is the best post BeOS R5.03 OS out there currently.
EDIT:
And remembering this is a Syllable thread : Vanders and the other developers are doing a good job. If they carry on like they are, soon it’s going to be hard to decide with OS to use again 😉
Edited 2006-08-25 09:19