Syllable 0.4.5 is out! You can see the changelog here. This release is the last of the Syllable 0.4 releases, and comes after over a year of development. Development will now begin on Syllable 0.5, which we hope will bring great improvements and increased stability to Syllable.
If you wish to chat about it, come to the #syllable channel on the irc.freenode.net IRC server.
Is this based on a Linux kernel, and isn’t there a PPC version?
I know very little about this OS, but I must point out the obvious fact that the website looks nothing like the OS in the screenshots. Rather it looks like the KDE site, at least the graphics do. Many OS’s, like OpenBeos, have some resemblence to the host OS GUI.
Syllable isn’t Linux-based. It’s based on AtheOS (www.atheos.cx), which is an operating system created by one individual. He stopped work on it, and Syllable is a continuation of that. There isn’t a PPC version – it is i586 only at the present time.
I’m not sure what you mean by Syllable’s host OS. Syllable’s gui is rather underdeveloped compared with the rest of the operating system. They’ve been concentrating on other things.
Sorry, what I meant was that the website doesn’t have many parrallels to the screenshots of syllable, meaning the “host OS”.
Why don’t projects like BeFree (or even obos for that matter) target syllable instead of linux?
It looks like syllable is working now, and has a similar architecture to the original beos?
It sucks.
I’ve been meaning to try out Syllable ever since it first came out, and before that I had been meaning to try out AtheOS. There are a lot of things about the project that have interested me. The main things that have held me back have been mainly uncertainty over a couple of questions
How easy is it to install?
How easy is it to get rid of?
It is far from styllish now, needs lots of work. I don’t like the GUI, the website, the icon are clearly a rape from Windows… We need some innovative thinking here, not yet another functionaly toy OS…
From the Syllable web site
“The goal of Syllable is to create a reliable and easy to use Open Source Operating System for the home and small office user. We also want to encourage developers to create an Operating System that is intuitive, easy to use, and powerful”
it seems to me that the goal should be more specific than a general desktop os…
Why would I use this OS?
My suggestion to the Syllable team, focus on one aspect of the OS and make it the reason people will want to go through the hassle of installing it
IMHO…
You wouldn´t believe how easy is to install it. I encourage you to try, just burn the ISO, and the installer will guide you in a way i´d love other oS´s to do..
Re: The goal of Syllable
The goal is pretty clear IMHO. Why would you use it? Because its functional, easy, fast reliable, safe and made for your desktop. As easy as that
(yeah, i know what you are thinking, “Linux does this today, windows does this today.., why do they botter?”
Easy friend, we believe it can be made “better, easier and nicer”
About the website:
I´m the person in charge of the web site, and i´ve been critiziced many times because of it “look”, i encourage you.. if you feel you can help, to join me, and make it look nicer. Any help is really appreciated.
Same goes for the GUI.
If you feel you can make it better, PLEASE!, join us!
I think the website is beautiful and does not remind me of KDE or WinXP. I think it is just the icons that give people that impression.
About making the site look like the OS? I remembered reading that eventually there would be an overhaul of the GUI look for the OS, so don’t worry about stuff like that right now.
I also agree the website is beautiful. The icons and graphics have a nice look. The only problem I have is with the download section. Sometimes downloads are only on http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/syllable or vice-versa. I also dislike the categorization for http://www.syllable.org‘s download section. Other than that, very easy to navigate, and easy on the eyes.
> Why don’t projects like BeFree (or even obos for that
> matter) target syllable instead of linux?
OpenBeos isn’t based on Linux. It uses the NewOS kernel which it has developed rapidly since it first made the fork. I know nothing about BeFree though.
> It looks like syllable is working now, and has a similar
> architecture to the original beos?
To my knowledge, every release of syllable has been “working” as far as stability is concearned. Why you believe it hasn’t been functional up until now is beyond me. Whether you mean “working” as a desktop OS is something different. Apart from using a C++ API and a few similarities in the 64bit Journaling Filesystem, I don’t believe AtheOS/Syllable share many similarities with BeOS.
Haven’t tried Syllable, but the last version of Atheos was easy enough to install if you followed the instructions and had supported hardware and a suitable partition (I used a boot floppy so didn’t even have to modify my boot sector…)
Not for the non-technical, but easy enough if your comfortable with a text editor, partitions and file systems.
And getting rid of it (if you use the boot floppy method) would be a simple matter of deleting the partition.
Do we want yet another free kernel? There are a host of already stable kerner like Linux, BSD and Mach. Besides, I doubt we can build a significantly better kernel. Be is an example; it is good but not good enough that people abandon UNIX kernels.
The weak point of free OSes is GUI. Windows UI and Mac UI are better; they are more stable, simpler and more consistent. X-Windows sucks; it is unnecessary complex. There are too many ways to make a GUI application like GNOME, KDE, Motify, GNUStep and so on.
Linux + some desktop environment seems better solution.
Im still wondering how projects like these can cope with the closed nature of many hardware drivers. Linux has changed things probably a little bit, but still it just ‘feels wrong’. I think that all drivers for all products should be open source, so that they can improve competition on different operating systems. New operating systems should not have to deal with support of big companies like Ati/Nvidia/etc. Just work together on open standards and compete on the implementation… I want to see more then a few operating systems… I want innovation/competion…
My personal motivations to use Linux is choice, so I got to say: keep up the work Syllable. Because choice IS good.
Linux is aiming at a different goal than Syllable for a start. Linux is attempting to fill every market, from embeded systems to NUMA super computers. While it does a good job of it, it also means that the Linux codebase is large and unwieldly. Note that only in the 2.6 kernels is Linux finally getting a preemptable kernel, something that many other operating systems for desktop users have been doing for a while now. Linus also refuses to stabalise the driver API; this has a major impact on drivers, particularly from hardware manufacturers. They have to hit a continually moving target, and it not only causes problems but it can also simply put hardware developers off of providing drivers for Linux. Its just too much work for a lot of them.
Apart from those rather political reasons (I am biased, after all. Many of you will disagree with me, thats fine) there are other reasons. The most compeling is that Syllable is simply a continuation of AtheOS, and we must maintain compatability with the AtheOS codebase. The message passing IPC, the VFS and other low-level functions in the Syllable kernel are not available in Linux or any other Unix-like kernel; we would have to port all of these extensions to a new kernel. Many of them would simply not be accepted; there is already work in Linux to extend the VFS to support extended filesystem attributes, something which both the filesystem in Syllable (AFS) and XFS in Linux support. Last but not least, the Syllable kernel is far more light weight and easier to manage.
Wether it is technically “better” depends on what you want to do, but I will point out that the Syllable kernel has kernel level preemptable threads, a poweful IPC mechanism with message ports, SMP with fine-grained locking, a 64bit VFS, a kernel ELF loader and RTDL, a clean driver API and all sorts of other little niceties that make Syllable responsive, powerful and nice to work with. You might be able to do some or even all of that with another kernel, but Syllable is one cohesive system all the way from the kernel to the GUI API. They’ve been designed together to work together, and changing the kernel would simply break a lot of clean design that has gone into Syllable so far.
> Do we want yet another free kernel? There are a host of already stable
> kerner like Linux, BSD and Mach. Besides, I doubt we can build a
> significantly better kernel. Be is an example; it is good but not good
> enough that people abandon UNIX kernels.
There are many reasons why one would write another kernel. Perhaps they are unsatisfied with current popular ones for reasons such as excessive bloat, poor design, poor performance or possibly they just enjoy the process of writing it so much that they will do it just for fun. After all, that’s how Linux began.
> The weak point of free OSes is GUI. Windows UI and Mac UI are better;
> they are more stable, simpler and more consistent. X-Windows sucks;
> it is unnecessary complex. There are too many ways to make a GUI
> application like GNOME, KDE, Motify, GNUStep and so on.
The Windows UI is more stable? I think not. Explorer crashes all over itself when put under stress. This is one of the trade-offs of having it so integral in the OS. I would argue that Aqua+Quartz offers similar stability to GNOME, KDE and the free window managers.
As far as consistency is concearned, Mac wins by default. Only a limited number of widgets exist and developers are highly encouraged not to create new ones. Themes like BlueCurve provide extra consistency on the *nix DEs as well as Galaxy and SuSE’s implementation of Keramic for GTK+.
Consistency on Windows? You can forget it. Windows developers will create control after control that has the exact function. How many types of combo boxes have you used over the years on win32? A lot? I should think so. Also, open Office XP, Office 2003, a Windows XP designed app like Movie Maker and Office 2000 next to each other. You will see that all have totally inconsistent UI design and themes. Almost all Windows apps use the old look and feel but starting with XP, a new look has been introduced while the old ones retain the old look. This is attrocious (IMHO).
> Linux + some desktop environment seems better solution.
If that’s what you prefer, use it. Syllable has different goals and if you don’t like them, don’t use it. You have no right to say that their project is unworthy.
I’m fed up with “new” OSs built over Unix-like kernels.
Welcome Syllabe
Is there a way to install Syllabe on a FAT(32) partition ?
My HD is already partitionned and I don’t have any other HD.
(and I don’t wanna repartition it)
@+,
Leo.
Well what I don’t like is the way it opens up two command windows when it boots with the one on top obscuring the view of the one underneath that has all of the install instructions – a novice isn’t likely to spot that second window.
This OS only boots properly on about a third of occasions, where either it hangs and never gets to an install GUI, or it quits with an ‘unrecoverable processor error’. Also when it does start trying to install, it fails because of multiple permission denied errors, ‘cannot write xyz to zyx permission denied’ etc. This OS still has a long way to go before it can be considered usable.
Q
Anonymous, would you like to elaborate on your dislike of the download section? The http://www.syllable.org domain you name does not exist, or at least it isn’t used by us. The only downloads that are on SourceForge but not on the main site are old versions of packages that are available in the download section. We want to keep the main download section clean and encourage people to use the latest versions, while keeping the archives available on SourceForge for those who need them.
What is it that you don’t like about the categorization? Keep in mind that this is a desktop OS, so our categorization is different than what you may be used to from other systems that are also used as servers.
Kaj
what i want to see is a working open source for serious audio video work. low latency for audio, smooth video, media framework, more or less something like beos. windows and linux are lacking a nice unified design (linux: alsa, jack, oss / windows: mme, directx, asio, vfw,…).
what about:
– low latency pro audio drivers
– video and audio codecs
– a framework like gstreamer or beos mediakit
– interconnecting different av apps (like jack for audio)
Nice job. Good to see Syllable continuing its improvement.
Think I will have to download and install this and see how things have progressed!
Interesting problems you’re having.
The installer is temporary, until we get a proper graphical installer working. Normally the second ATerm should be behind the one running the installation script, but they’re started at about the same time so the installtion script is sometimes obscured. That simply wont be a problem when we have a proper installer, and I do apologise for the poor installation system we have presently.
What boot problems do you have exactly when you say that Syllable “only boots properly on about a third of occasions”? Do you see any error messages? Does it attempt to initialise your video card and hang? Does it open an ATerm and hang? Does your computer just reboot?
I’ve also never heard of the “unrecoverable processor error”. What hardware are you trying to run Syllable on? You’ll need a Pentium at least, and Syllable has been reported to work all the way upto Pentium IV’s and Athlon XP’s. I’ve not yet had anyone report success on a Cyrix CPU though. What CPU/chipset/video card & how much RAM do you have?
I’ve never heard of the “permission denied” error either. Are you trying to install to the correct partition? How large is the partition, and did you set the partition type to “AtheOS” with the Syllable Partition Manager?
Anyone tried this with VMWare? Have any tips? I’ve just downloaded the ISO and managed to boot the CD and will be starting the install shortly. I can report back here with anything I find, but would love it if anyone had gone through this before and would share any snags they ran into… Thanks!
Yes, and there is an FAQ section devoted to running Syllable on VMWare, although it is out of date. You can read it at http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_c…
The Windows UI is more stable? I think not. Explorer crashes all over itself when put under stress. This is one of the trade-offs of having it so integral in the OS. I would argue that Aqua+Quartz offers similar stability to GNOME, KDE and the free window managers
-With WinXP when explorer crashes at least it doesn’t take all apps running with it to the grave like X, it just restarts and the app’s are still there, although you do lose the systray icons for some of them (but they’re still running). I agree that gnome and KDE are very stable, X is not.
As far as consistency is concearned, Mac wins by default. Only a limited number of widgets exist and developers are highly encouraged not to create new ones. Themes like BlueCurve provide extra consistency on the *nix DEs as well as Galaxy and SuSE’s implementation of Keramic for GTK+.
-Nothing stopping me from using themes with xp.
This is what I currently use:
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/fagona/other/1.jpg
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/fagona/other/1b.jpg
But I could use a keramic (yuk) theme too:
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/fagona/other/3.jpg (sorry riaa 😛 )
Or a mac theme:
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/fagona/other/2.jpg
Consistency on Windows? You can forget it. Windows developers will create control after control that has the exact function. How many types of combo boxes have you used over the years on win32? A lot? I should think so. Also, open Office XP, Office 2003, a Windows XP designed app like Movie Maker and Office 2000 next to each other. You will see that all have totally inconsistent UI design and themes. Almost all Windows apps use the old look and feel but starting with XP, a new look has been introduced while the old ones retain the old look. This is attrocious (IMHO).
-Having two different toolkits is “attrocious”?? LOL How many of them can you have on linux? Face it, it’s the same crap on both windows and linux, but at least with windows app’s behave the same and copy/paste actually works.
Linus also refuses to stabalise the driver API
Ahem. AFAIK, the API for Linux drivers is fairly stable.
It’s the ABI that isn’t stable.
> With WinXP when explorer crashes at least it doesn’t take all apps
> running with it to the grave like X, it just restarts and the app’s are
> still there, although you do lose the systray icons for some of them
> (but they’re still running). I agree that gnome and KDE are very stable,
> X is not.
True, Explorer only takes itself to the grave (unless it hogs the CPU) and X will cause all of your apps to die. The fact is, in 2 weeks of using Windows XP (I tried it for a while, just out of curiosity). Explorer crashed on me at least 5-6 times a day. I’m sure that there are ways of trying to prevent it like perhaps refraining from using menus to browse the filesystem, waiting for a file copy to finish before working with another app or only browsing networks with a mouse (using the arrow keys causes all kinds of trouble for me).
The fact is, why should I have to do this? Since I bought MacOSX 10.2 last November, the Finder has never crashed. This is heavy, day to day usage. Ripping CDs, copying files from the network, compiling OpenOffice.org (one HUGE app) and all while listening to music. I’m using a PowerMac G3 350 BTW. Everything stays responsive.
Explorer (in my experience) is a lot more fragile.
Nautilus (on my 2.0GHz P4 laptop) has crashed once in 3 months since I installed RedHat 9.0. Before with 6 months of using RH 8.0, it only occurred once or twice (can’t exactly remember).
Both of these systems are used for at least 4-5 hours each day. Why can’t explorer go a day (or even a week) without crashing?
> Having two different toolkits is “attrocious”?? LOL How many of them
> can you have on linux? Face it, it’s the same crap on both windows
> and linux, but at least with windows app’s behave the same and copy
> paste actually works.
I didn’t say toolkits, I said look & feel. Windows has lots of toolkits. Mmm, lets see. MFC, .NET, WinAPI, VCL (Borland), QT and many others (I won’t even mention Visual Basic
. Of course you can use O.S.S toolkits like wxWindows, FLTK, GTK+.
So, I agree with you that a large number exist on Linux/*BSDs. etc. I just don’t know how you can believe that Windows has a unified way of writing code. The only thing that comes to mind is BeOS.