The long awaited Syllable 0.5.4 is now available. This release includes a completly new Desktop and Registrar server which adds important functionality to Syllable.
Syllable 0.5.4 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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I think it would be wise to put up a screenshot of the “completly new Desktop” on the Syllable website. All i could find where shots of 0.53 and lower..pitty.
Oh well i am currently downloading it
Mabe you could post some once you get it installed! I personally am very interested in this now, as I have a Voodoo 3
Screenshots of the new desktop can be found here:
http://www.syllable.org/screenshots.php
They’re the ones mentioning the “optional dock”. The first five show it in action. Also, the following OSNews story explains Syllable in more detail:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7900
And to keep track of developments, have a gander at the newsletter:
http://msa.section.me.uk/sdn/
Micheal, those screenshots dont include the .5.4 release Bas was talking about.
Im interesed.
proph3t, they do — those 0.5.3 screenshots were taken with pre-release versions of the new desktop. That’s the desktop that has been fully rolled-in for 0.5.4. Essentially, here’s the difference:
Syllable’s desktop for 0.5.3 and earlier:
http://www.syllable.org/screenshots/syllable4.png
Syllable’s new desktop made default in 0.5.4:
http://www.syllable.org/screenshots/0.5.3_with_dock_1.gif
Hopefully that’ll clear things up!
http://www.syllable.org/screenshots.php
If these are screen shots from “the completely new desktop” as Mr. Michael states, than to me they look no different then the recent review with screenshots of Syllable posted here on OSNews.
Oh well i am currently downloading it
Lucky you…I’ve been trying to download it for hours, getting laughable speeds of like 8 KB/sec. Now all the mirrors say the file isn’t available.
I don’t like the new desktop much, the old beos style bar was better. Now it just looks like an XP clone with a blucurve theme.
It may look like it but it rocks as an OS (well, very well for a small beta os).
I don’t like the new desktop much, the old beos style bar was better.
I like the BeOS-style better too. I guess that “start menu”-type menu bar at the top of the screen is called the “dock”.
Not that it’s any of my business, but I get the impression that, although many of the Syllable folks are ex-BeOS’ers, they want Syllable to be distinctly not-BeOS-like. That’s just my rough impression anyway. Good luck to the Syllable dev team — it looks like they’re getting some work done over there on the other side of the pond.
Good luck to the Syllable dev team — it looks like they’re getting some work done over there on the other side of the pond.
Thanks. :o) But we’re actually on both sides of the pond… :o)
i like the new look personaly
it’s look like very nice
does this system supports russian encodings?
Mmmm this one won’t boot; gives me a kernel panic on bootup… Too bad, I promised Micheal on irc I’d give it a shot once it was released… Too bad I didn’t get any further. I posted this on the Syllable forum too, I hope it’s an easy error to fix
.
Syllable uses UTF-8 and includes a Russian keymap. You will probably need to install a suitable font though. Just copy the .ttf (TrueType) files to /system/fonts/
Thom I’ve seen your post; I need more information.
Check the syllable forum, I hope that helps!
I really want to try out Syllable, last time I tried was like a year ago. I’d really love to see the progress made
.
I have so far not been able to get Syllable to boot on any PC that I own, but Linux of course has no problem with them. Apparently, I am not the only one with this problem. I’ve thinking that maybe the solution is to toss out Syllable’s kernel and port the rest of Syllable over to the Linux or BSD kernel.
Since Syllable has such a small development team, it’d certainly let them ride on Linux or BSD’s coattails and then focus on things like usability and driver development where necessary.
Personally… I love the desktop! It looks really nice! Hope I can try it soon on my laptop.
What kind of GUI are you using?
DirectFB?, nanoX?, tinyX?, something for embeeded purposes?
“I’ve thinking that maybe the solution is to toss out Syllable’s kernel and port the rest of Syllable over to the Linux or BSD kernel.”
If they did that, they would literally KILL their main intention… MAKE a TOTALLY NEW os.
And that is a foolish thing.. People behind Syllable: continue on your way, you are in the right direction!
There is no way, ever, that we will port anything from Syllable onto the Linux kernel. If we did that we’d only inherit the terrible device management and loose our nicely modular kernel. We really really do like our own kernel; it is lightweight, modular and tunable as a good desktop OS kernel. Linux can be some of those things, some of the time, but it isn’t all of them. You are probably not the only one with problems booting Syllable; there are bugs in the ATAPI layer of the ATA driver which I will fix if I can ever convince someone to generate a kernel log and mail it to me.
mehru, the GUI is specific to Syllable but similiar to BeOS. It is a client/server design. The applications use libsyllable (the clients) to talk to the appserver (the server). Everything is composited and Alpha channels are supported throughout. 2D rendering is accelerated on a large number of video cards.
Maybe you could try it with qEmu. For me the pci mode will not start. It hangs on mounting the cdrom, I think. If I switch to isa mode, it could not found any video-driver or accurate vesa mode.
So I don´t know if these are a qEmu bugs or Syllable. But I would like to try it, as it would not detect the harddrive on my real laptop (ati ixp chipset problem I think).
Syllable _can_ run in Qemu, but it needs something passed at the Grub boot prompt.
One of my planned projects is a neatly packaged-up Qemu and Syllable bundle — basically just a few clicks and you can be trying out the OS.
Mike (from Links2 in 0.5.4!)
Try this — it’s some info Vanders posted on the forum a while back. I think this is how I did it… 🙂
“I’ve just tried LiveCD4 on QEmu 0.6.0 running on Windows XP. You need to add “enable_ata_dma=false” to the kernel options.
Just hit “e” at the Grub menu, then move to the second line, press “e” again, then add enable_ata_dma=false to the end of the line. Press Enter and then “b” to boot. It should boot nice and fast then.“
Have seen it on the forum, too. But this is, as if I use the isa mode. No VESA mode accessable. This is something strange, as the VESA mode works fine in Zeta on qEmu.
Heh, what is with you people? Every knew os that gets a posts someone says’ they should dump thier kernel/whatever and use linux/bsd/whatever.. its very annoying
Quite… Linux has its points, its robust, well developed, powerful and flexible… but its based on a 30+ year old OS and wasn’t a terribly great implementation of that (from a design standpoint at least). Hardly end-of-the-world issues I’ll admit, but, good enough reasons to do something different for many.
but its based on a 30+ year old OS
—
rebuttal: things evolve. Linux gets modern things all the day
things like udev and selinux and very new for example
C’mon ppl; here’s this specific new OS, at least let out whether it will run in virtual machines, and if we try it on hardware, what era it should all be.
Love the idea of getting good use from my power-wasting Voodoo3, dislike the idea of it sneezing all over an otherwise nifty SATA RAID (firmware) array.
Also, thanks a thousand and change for saving me a trip to McMurdo base in order to encounter alien invention….
Since it’s already in the can.
…er, it does burn on regular black disks, right?
Sorry kids, but IMO that’s just fugly! Coldfish in particular.