Michael Saunders created a Windows package containing a 500 MB virtual Syllable 0.5.4 disk image, along with the QEMU PC emulator. Recommended specs are 1.5 GHz+ with 256 MB RAM.
Syllable on Windows through QEMU
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Eugenia Loli
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Here’s a direct link to the webpage:
http://msa.section.me.uk/syllable/qemu/
Essentially, you just download the archive, extract, and run SYLLABLE.BAT. That’s really all there is to it! Of course, running through an emulator makes it pretty slow, but on 2 GHz+ machines it should be OK to try out the OS and see what it’s capable of.
I’d love to hear any suggestions here in the OSNews comments section!
Mmm, I’m not sure if this is the best way to distribute an operating system; since it doesn’t represent the speed and responsiveness of an OS. Us advanced users will understand; I’m note sure though if the end-user will realize that though, no matter how many times you say it.
But, all in all, still a nice initiative and as soon as I get the time I’ll fire up my Windows installation and give it a try.
“Mmm, I’m not sure if this is the best way to distribute an operating system; since it doesn’t represent the speed and responsiveness of an OS.”
It isn’t — but that’s why first and foremost we push the installation and live CDs. This is just a small side-project, giving potential developers the chance to see the OS in action, before they go on to try it properly.
I know what you mean about end-users, but that isn’t the priority now; more developers is the key. There’s still quite a bit to be done before the project needs lots of end-users giving it a spin.
Anyway, glad you’ve been enjoying Syllable’s progress Thom 🙂
I just downloaded qemu and stated playing with it on my fedora desktop system afew days ago. I’m on my windows laptop right now, and think I’ll give it a try. The laptop is way below the recomended standar, but hey I’m patient.
I would have never tried linux, untill after I learned it with BOCHS. Sure I’m happy with it now, but I don’t know if I would have had the guts to try it first. Sure the LiveCD is cool, and I did use one of those before my first install as well, but neither my wireless card not my ethernet card were supported, so I would have had to go out and buy hardware just to test somehting I may not end up likeing. In anycase, this has a place, even for end users.
this is first time i’ve gotten to use syllable i have d’loaded versions in the past but because of my ignorance mainly havent bothered to read up on the install process and have as such stopped at the installer.
but i must say im impressed. the OS holds alot of promise, on QEMU the system isnt fast but thats because of QEMU not the OS.
a few comments i have are the keyboard when num. lock is on the “insert”, “home” keys etc all become numerical keys i dont no if this is an isolated case or not, another thing is to do with the GUI but this is mainly because of the GUI’s iv used in the past the positioning of the close button in the middle of the window function buttons. but like i said it may just be me who it doesnt feel right for.
It isn’t — but that’s why first and foremost we push the installation and live CDs. This is just a small side-project, giving potential developers the chance to see the OS in action, before they go on to try it properly.
True, but still. Most people trying out Syllable (or any other small OS for that matter) will mostly not be devs. Even people with expanded knowledge on OSs will be influenced by the lower speeds and such.
Oh, I know, I’m kinda whining, this is a good initiative.
Anyway, glad you’ve been enjoying Syllable’s progress Thom 🙂
Hey, I might be a SkyOS supporter, but in the first place I’m an OS enthousiast– so of course I follow Syllable’s progress
. Heck, I even follow DesktopLinux’ progress… If you can speak of progress that is… Okay I should shut up now, for the sake of this thread and this OS 
.
sorry GUI thing is wrong lol im tired just ignore that bit
“this is first time i’ve gotten to use syllable”
Cool, glad it’s worked out for you. Hopefully future QEMU releases will bring about more speed boosts!
“…in the past the positioning of the close button in the middle of the window function buttons.”
This is configurable. If you look at a recent window decorator by Terry Glass:
http://zorak.42geeks.com/Syllable/WarpSpeed_Test1.png
Here, the close button is towards the left. Syllable’s UI is highly configurable and just about everything can be tweaked — so you can even have something very BeOS-esque, like this I worked on a while back:
http://www.syllable.org/screenshots/beish-update.gif
M
This works very well. Fun to play with.
“True, but still. Most people trying out Syllable (or any other small OS for that matter) will mostly not be devs.”
Oh yep, you’re right there. The majority will be users intrigued by this OS and seeing how far it’s progressing. But there are quite a few developers who hang around on OSNews, Slashdot etc. — so that’s why we’ve promoted our work in those places.
Actually Thom, if you read this, can you think of any additional places to post news about OS developments? I know that you follow a lot of OSes, so it’d be cool if you had any thoughts!
M
…is the only reason I’ve explored Syllable. I’m not going to use an actual CD on it, and I’m damn sure not going to install it, but QEMU is great for me fiddling around with it!
Is it QEMU that is darn slow? I’m running at 2.8Ghz and Syllable feels like it’s running on a old 80386! Mabe BOSH would be better?
And you should enable network support, would be more fun to play around. ABrowse can’t browse with no net….
“Is it QEMU that is darn slow? I’m running at 2.8Ghz and Syllable feels like it’s running on a old 80386! Mabe BOSH would be better?”
Yeah, running under QEMU will always be a lot slower than the real thing — it’s emulating every CPU instruction. You’re looking at 10x slower than a native machine, and possibly more. Bochs doesn’t run faster than QEMU (in many cases it’s a lot slower) so there’s nothing to be gained there.
To get an idea of how lightning fast Syllable really is (it’ll boot in under 10 secs on your machine), try out the LiveCD or a full installation. Regarding network support, it can be activated with the packages I’ve made; right now I haven’t tried it though. Some users have told me that it works so you should be OK!
I did try the LiveCD but it can’t boot on my PC…
It stop in the loading process with no errors, nothing. I just can’t get to the GUI.
I did try the LiveCD but it can’t boot on my PC…
If you have a floppy drive, try using a boot-disk. It worked well for me.
Mouse doesn’t work for me
Actually QEMU is more like vmware than bochs, it doesnt emulate the CPU unless it needs to (running QEMU on PPC running x86 OS, or running it on x86 running PPC OS).
QEMU as a test showed here not long ago is 10x faster than bochs if i remember correctly, and faster than Valgrind(Valgrid or something
), from the mailing lists it is considered to be marginally slower than VMWare.
“Actually QEMU is more like vmware than bochs, it doesnt emulate the CPU unless it needs to”
Unless something has changed in 0.6+, this isn’t true. QEMU does not use virtualisation like VMware — it’s much more like Bochs in that it emulates a CPU (via a nifty dynamic translation engine). Even when emulating x86 on x86.
And AFAIK there’s no VMware-esque virtualisation planned for future releases. Only Plex86 is going in that direction.
You’re both right, although Michael is more right. Taken straight from the front page of qemu.org:
“QEMU has two operating modes:
* Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full system (for example a PC), including a processor and various peripherials. It can be used to launch different Operating Systems without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.
* User mode emulation (Linux host only). In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes compiled for one CPU on another CPU. It can be used to launch the Wine Windows API emulator or to ease cross-compilation and cross-debugging.”
As Qemu isn’t running Linux in this instance the first mode applies, so an entire PC (including CPU) is being emulated. Syllable will also be using the Vesa driver at 16bit colour depth, so that will make things even slower. Qemu is still much faster than Bochs, though.
how easy is it to use something like qemu for developing for syllable? Is it easy to compile from a host operating straight into the image and then running the image in a virtual machine? Would it be slow? Could you run a debugger around it?
Why not package a demo for VirtualPC, it doesn’t ask registration info like VMWare and also you can use VPC for 45days.
I am sure it would run a lot faster too.