The newest version of the Syllable operating system (based on AtheOS) is now available. Changes include: ATA and ATAPI, improved SB Live! and Audigy support, ISO-9660 FS, and a bootable CD (as well as many updates/fixes). Read about it here.
Syllable 0.4.4 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This release is interesting to me, so I’m downloading the iso right now.
Anybody know if this iso is a “live” or just an installation cd?
Installation AFAIK. You won’t need more than 500 MB of space anyway. If you have an old hard drive or small partition around, use it for installing Syllable.
I installed it. It’s not a livecd. Be careful when installing. The thing has a very sensitive installer. You’ll see what I mean when you get down and dirty with it. I guess it’s not bad, but it can be a lot better with more error checking. Especially the part about picking a partition to install to.
Good luck.
This is the final straw – I must try Syllable!!
Well it is our first installation CD
.
Everyone that ever wanted CD support, you owe a big thanks to Vanders, Arno and Ville. They’ve done an excellent job although being the first release there are sure to be bugs.
This is great! Now all I need is a port of irssi instead of BitchX and bittorrent.
You forgot Quake 2
Now this I like, a true open source desktop contender. Granted it’s far from finished, but it’s looking pretty good so far…
Can someone point me to ISO please? I am having trouble finding it.
Scroll down to the pink selections and download the big file:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55553&release…
Indeed, Syllable guys should update their download page on their web site so people can find it easier.
Cool, thx Eugenia
Has anyone had a chance to try the ISO under Vmware yet? I downloaded the previous release on Tuesday and it ran fine, if a little sluggish.
Also, is the OS capable of DHCP yet? When I installed it under vmware the other day, it seemed to recognise the network card, but was unable to grab an address off my Smoothwall box
I just hope they’ve fixed the font issues that I had – http://images.onenineteen.net/screenshots/syllable/fonts.JPG
Cheers,
ent
The font problem is due to the Graphics Display being set to 32bit. I was having the same problem and then I set my Display to 16bit and everything was fine!
Cheers, I’ll give that a try.
Sorry for about the links everyone. I completly forgot to update them. I’ve done them now on the Syllable website, so you can find everything at http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Downloads
The installer is a little shoddy, yes. It is temporary until we get a proper installer done. If you really want to, you can ignore the installation script and do it the “old” way manually (There is a second terminal open behind the first).
Nick, you have to enable DHCP for your network card. Open the Network preferences (Prefs->Network), select the network device, click “Edit” and then select the “Use DHCP” checkbox. Close the window, apply the changes and Syllable will attempt to get an IP. If you have any problems everything is logged to /var/log/dhcpc so you can see what is happening.
I tried to install Syllable 0.4.4 but the grub installation failed. I created a primary partition (5GB, /dev/hdb2) on /dev/hdb. After booting from CD, I started DiskManager to change the partition type because I created it under Linux. Then I returned to the terminal where I answered the questions for the Syllable installation. Syllable installation went fine. But when I tried to reboot by pressing Alt+Ctrl+Del, the computer hanged. I’ve been waiting for some minutes and then pushed the reset button. After grub has been started, I entered the command line and entered “root (hd1,1)” and then “setup (hd1,1)” (I’m using lilo as primary boot manager). After issueing the setup command, grub complaint the lack of the file “stage1”. Any hints on this?
BTW this is my box: ASUS A7V266 Mainbord, Athlon XP1500+, 768MB RAM, 15GB+60GB harddisk, Ricoh MP7083A CDR/CD-RW, LG DVD Drive, Soundblaster Live!, NVidia GForce MX200 graphics adapter, NIC (Realtek chipset).
Does it have PPP? Also, does it have anything unique, special or innovative that I would miss sorely if I wasn’t using Syllable?
Grub isn’t being very agreeable right now. I configured the text file according to the explaination in the installer but for some reason its just booting into command line(no boot menu).
you can go to Syllable’s IRC channel at #syllable on the irc.freenode.net server.
And be careful installing Syllable, it is still for advanced users for a reason.
Well, I gave Syllable another try. Now I was able to install it. The problem seems to be that it takes very long
(3-5 minutes) to unmount the installation partition.
I just upgraded to Syllable 0.4.4 (run the upgrade.sh script and rebooted).
Now, the kernel is unable to mount /dev/disk/bios/hda/1 and thus booting fails.
Does anyone know if the boot parameters in menu.lst have to be changed for 0.4.4?
Thanks,
Johannes
“Does anyone know if the boot parameters in menu.lst have to be changed for 0.4.4? ”
Yes, something to do with pointing to the new IDE block device. Go to sf.net/projects/syllable/ and go to the mailing lists, I think Vanders mentioned it there, or in the installation instructions, I can’t remember.
title Syllable
root (hd0,1)
kernel /atheos/sys/kernel.so root=/dev/disk/ide/hda/1
module /atheos/sys/drivers/fs/afs
module /atheos/sys/drivers/dev/disk/ata
upgrade worked great for me btw…
It doesn’t boot for me. It gets started and then says “no boot device found..” Maybe next time.
David, do you also see errors along the lines of “load_filesystem() : failed to load driver”? Someone else has reported this problem on the list, too.
I did see somthing. I will try to boot again when I get home from work. I will get as much info for you as I can. Should I put that info here?
No, could you post it either to the Forums on http://syllable.sourceforge.net or to the mailing list please? Thanks