Syllable 0.5.2 has been released and is now available for download. Some of the changes include new graphics card drivers for the nVidia GeForceFX and the Savage IX/MX chipsets. The media framework has also been updated, so now Syllable works with multiple soundcards. A full list of changes can be found on the Syllable website.
Looking forward to trying this out when I’ve got a spare hour or so. There’s still a huge gap in the market for a small, fast, stable, easy and secure OS that runs on commodity hardware. Linux is very stable and secure, but modern distros guzzle up RAM by the bucketload. Windows is easy and runs on commodity hardware, but isn’t too stable and is very insecure. MacOS X is reliable and easy, but is rather slow and only runs on single-vendor hardware.
Syllable can provide all these things, resulting in an excellent desktop OS. There’s still a huge amount of work to do, but looking at its progress from the AtheOS fork, it’s going well. With some more drivers and polish added to the UI, it could well be the ideal open source OS to throw on that old Pentium box.
Good luck Vanders and co.!
Windows is easy and runs on commodity hardware, but isn’t too stable
Windows is only unstable on poor hardware and/or with poor drivers. That’s true for every operating system. Windows has been stable since 2000, get with the times.
Well said Anonymous, but please let’s stick to the topic.
Oh, and Windows has been stable since NT 3.1. Now that was a stable OS.
More on-topic:
Yay for Syllable for taking advantage of the gorgeous Crystal icons! They need to include updated screenshots though.
The media framework looks like quite an achievement. Props to Arno Klenke.
Does anybody know what version of KHTML Abrowse uses now? Originally it used 2.x, but 3.x (especially 3.2) is a lot better.
Lastly, I saw this in the changelog:
All drawing operations and framebuffer accesses are first done in an offscreen buffer. A seperate driver thread copies this data into the visible area on v-blank. This makes scrolling a lot smoother.
————-
Can anybody familiar with Syllable explain what this means? Is this regular double-buffering (one back-buffer for the whole screen), or something more sinister (one back-buffer per Windows)?
“Yay for Syllable for taking advantage of the gorgeous Crystal icons! They need to include updated screenshots though.”
Well, it still looks pretty much identical to those earlier releases. There’s nothing much new to show at present; apparently the plan is to revamp the GUI later once all the foundations are in place. Makes a lot of sense, as re-skinning a GUI is much easier than making a good underlying structure in the first place!
The message just appeared on the mailing list and *bam* it’s on OSNews. You frightened me just now.
Either way, I’m glad to see that Syllable is improving steadily. Now if only someone would get around to porting a decent browser (or fixing ABrows for that matter) ….
what exactly is the media framework on syllable? is it comparable to the beos mediakit or gstreamer on linux?
i hope one day there will be jack (jack audio connection kit) in syllable :-).
this OS is promissing, i guess it’s the most popular hobby os.
The installer works fine on VMWare, but after installing grub and booting, the kernel gets hung up at the line:
“Log start: 802 BitmapStart: 34”
No Syllable for me :/
My question is: does it work with virtual pc (mac) yet?
Hey… you should get into marketing… that has potential as a slogan
OSNews – News that’s frightingly fast!
😀
it might be because VMWARE uses scuzzy as its default dis. set it to ata & it might work
“modern distros guzzle up RAM by the bucketload.”
I wonder what you mean.
It seems to me that Linux is very efficient with RAM.
It tries to use it to the max.
I never had any problem with starting new tasks and running out of RAM. Also Linux hardly swaps because it prefers to use the RAM first, unlike Windows.
Whats the point of having RAM and the OS not using it?
All drawing operations and framebuffer accesses are first done in an offscreen buffer. A seperate driver thread copies this data into the visible area on v-blank. This makes scrolling a lot smoother.
————-
Can anybody familiar with Syllable explain what this means? Is this regular double-buffering (one back-buffer for the whole screen), or something more sinister (one back-buffer per Windows)?
It is one back-buffer for the whole screen. This is done by the GeForceFX driver itself, so the act of switching between the two framebuffers is very fast. If this form of double buffering works as expected no doubt we’ll add double-buffering to the other video drivers.
what exactly is the media framework on syllable? is it comparable to the beos mediakit or gstreamer on linux?
It is similiar to both BeOS & GStreamer, yes. At the moment it is simple but can play back audio and video using a plugin based on FFMpeg, so it supports a lot of formats.
The installer works fine on VMWare, but after installing grub and booting, the kernel gets hung up..
You need to add “ata0=nodma ata1=nodma” to the kernel options or use the BIOS driver. You should read the VMware FAQ at http://syllable.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_c… which explains this in some more detail, and also links to some ready made (Out of date but upgradable) VMWare 3 & 4 images. If you need help with this, please ask on our forums or mailing list.
does it work with virtual pc (mac) yet?
Sadly not. I did have Syllable running on VPC for Windows at one point, but there are PCI & ATA driver issues. I don’t have access to VPC for testing Syllable any more, so I can’t finish that work. I may be able to get a copy of VPC for Windows & fix everything in time for Syllable 0.5.3.
“modern distros guzzle up RAM by the bucketload.”
I wonder what you mean.
It seems to me that Linux is very efficient with RAM.
Yes, _Linux_ is. But I said modern distros, not Linux as a kernel. Red Hat recommend 256M for comfortable use of Fedora Core 1 — equally, running KDE or GNOME on 128M machines isn’t the most pleasant experience. Add on top of that OpenOffice.org, Mozilla and other big apps and you need a lot of memory to get decent performance.
And this is why I love Linux. It’s easy to cut out the bloat, switch to lightweight window managers and cleaner apps, and still enjoy the stability, security and hardware support the Linux kernel brings. However, this requires some tweaking and knowledge; as a result, the “easy” Linux distros will naturally stick with KDE and GNOME, and continue to be demanding on hardware resources.
And that was my original point. While modern Linux distros are increasingly user-friendly, they’re big beasts, and the only alternative for older boxes is Debian or Slackware and Dillo, AbiWord, Sylpheed etc. which require more knowledge. So if Syllable can provide an easy-going, approachable and fast desktop with half the RAM requirements, it’ll be on to a winner.
I understand, but there are not many computers with less than 256 RAM. Old computers dont want Fedora. Fedora is modern. So it needs a modern computer. Makes sense.
Older pcs need something like Debian.
It is quite difficult to use Syllable, when you do not have enough RAM. Then it becomes unstable, for example it hang up then you want to change some preferences (like to change background) and shows that all memory is used. Now then I have 96 MB (earlier I had 40 MB) it works more stable. But I think Syllable needs even more RAM for good performance. So Syllable isn’t very suitable for weak computers.
My computer specifications: Pentium 200MHz MMX, 96MB RAM, 4MB video.
I like Syllable as an idea. I think the progress being made with it wonderful.
But, in order for it to be a useful (instead of a fun) OS, it will need applications.
I know it isn’t finished yet.
But, in order for it to be an OS that people can use, it will need:
A Standards Compliant Web Browser (a port of Phoenix?)
A Word Processor (AbiWord or Open Office?)
Lots of drivers for Printers
More Video Drivers
An “Aunt Minnie” Installer
In the last few versions, it has come a LONG way. Lots of great work is being put into it.
But, it still won’t boot properly on my P200MMX Box. The video card is still the sticking point. (Trident 2mb PCI Video)
It runs well on my Celeron 450 box though. But, due to the 15″ display on it, I can only run it in 640×480 and Syllable doesn’t scale down it’s display properly to small sizes. It has lots of problems running in smaller screen modes. It places windows off screen, and puts the controls for the Windows off the screen…
So, things like that need work.
But, basically… Go Syllable, go!
Oh, and a 45 day trial of Virtual PC can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/downloads/trial.asp
And I’m working on a video driver for VMware. Just have some kinks with the hardware cursor and it should be cool after that.
Cheers,
James
A Standards Compliant Web Browser (a port of Phoenix?)
A Word Processor (AbiWord or Open Office?)
Lots of drivers for Printers
More Video Drivers
An “Aunt Minnie” Installer
We have ABrowse, which is out of date but pretty good. I would love to port Gecko/Firebird & OpenOffice.org in the future but we have to complete the update of GCC (& other parts of the toolchain) and Glibc before “modern” code from those two projects will run. CUPS will give us printer support (Along with some additions of our own to make printing from within Syllable easy). Rick is working on an installer as we speak, and last but not least yes we do need more video drivers but then so does everyone..
But, it still won’t boot properly on my P200MMX Box. The video card is still the sticking point. (Trident 2mb PCI Video)
Your video card should be supported by Syllable. What sort of problems do you have? Do you see any error messages?
I understand, but there are not many computers with less than 256 RAM.
I hope you mean “not many computers on sale today”, because otherwise that couldn’t be further than the truth — the vast, VAST majority of computers in use on the planet are running with 32, 64 and 128M configurations. Millions upon millions of computers in business, a huge amount of home machines still running Windows 98/Me, and a very large number of systems in poorer countries. There was some research about this a few months back, and less than 10% of PCs in use had any more than 128M.
Another aspect is, what’s the goal of the OS? Syllable needs to offer concrete benefits over other systems to succeed. Right now it’s a bit easier to use than Linux, is open source, and free. Microsoft have made progress improving the stability of Windows, so it’s less of an incentive to switch to another OS. And to many newcomers the oft-told claim that Linux is much faster is often seen as untrue when a newcomer installs Fedora and finds his/her system not much speedier than WinXP.
Imagine an OS that used of half — or even a third — of the memory a typical WinXP / KDE/GNOME+Linux setup typically needs. Imagine it booting in half the time. Imagine it being free, easy to use, stable and fast. And imagine the effect that would have — even on a 512M box, if the OS is using up as little RAM as possible, it makes everything fly and gives more to applications.
Syllable is the closest OS to doing this. Longhorn will require 256M to run, and the next round of Linux distros will be equally demanding. People are starting to ask questions, and wanting more performance from their investment. They have older hardware. Especially some of us crusty old geeks; it’s always sour when WinXP or the latest Linux desktop on a 2 GHz box _still_ feels slower than a 7 MHz Amiga.
Syllable could really get a market here. BeOS nearly had it (and hopefully OpenBeOS can do the same)!
> Oh, and a 45 day trial of Virtual PC can be downloaded here:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/downloads/trial.asp
This version is obsolete.
The provided serial number works till January 2nd.
The funny thing is: for VPC2004 in the GUEST OS LIST Linux is gone…
Syllable:
I also tested Syllable on a PIII 200MHZ with 96MB and a 4MB Graphic card @ work.
1.) Was not able to set a proxy – at least I didn’t find it.
2.) The redrawing of moved windows was really slow.
Way to go…
Sounds great!!
Syllable has all the makings of a great and fun OS.
(You might need to change the name for all the Aunt Minnies who won’t be able to pronounce it or remember it.. LOL! One reason Windows is so successful. An easy to remember name..)
As for my P200MMX system… It tries to initialize the video card and fails, and then shuts down the App server.
I put that system away last night after the install failed.
I was going to wipe and retry on my Celeron 400 later today. I know that one works.
I kinda caught from the discussion of porting a newer Glibc that there would be some nice synergy in that. I’m looking forward to it.
It’s funny to me that a LOT of the Hobby/Replacement OS’es are having such problems with IDE drivers. AROS is having the same growing pains vis-a-vis ATA/IDE drivers.
I’d be willing to contribute towards a bounty for a re-written driver.
It tries to initialize the video card and fails, and then shuts down the App server.
If you could have wrote down any errors & emailed the mailing list we might have been able to track down the problem. I guess you won’t be willing to drag your old PC back out of the closet now..
You might need to change the name for all the Aunt Minnies who won’t be able to pronounce it or remember it.
Syllable is a normal English word! In fact that’s the very reason I chose it; it is normal, easy to remember and doesn’t contain the letters O & S in any combination.
It’s funny to me that a LOT of the Hobby/Replacement OS’es are having such problems with IDE drivers. AROS is having the same growing pains vis-a-vis ATA/IDE drivers.
Thats simply because ATA sucks. A lot. You couldn’t possibly imagine how badly ATA sucks. You might think an industrial shop-vac sucks, but that’s just peanuts compared to ATA. ATA sucks so badly that it can make grown men weep teers of blood.
Why can’t Syllable go to a VESA mode when it can’t directly talk to the card with a Native driver?
BeOS does this with cards it can’t support.
Black and white support is better than nothing, and I don’t go to enough shows where old hardware is sold to find a supported PCI card.
Why can’t Syllable go to a VESA mode when it can’t directly talk to the card with a Native driver?
It does. Some cards do not support Vesa or do not offer any suitable Vesa modes that Syllable can use.
Syllable isn’t entirely memory-efficient at the moment. There are a few memory leaks which need to be patched sometimes.