Syllable, AtheOS Archive

Syllable developer Daryl Dudey is hard at work the last few months creating new preference panels for the Syllable operating system. Check out the screenshot. Additionally, Syllable is still looking for kernel & driver developers to join the enthousiastic team. Also, here's an updated installation guide for Syllable.

The new release of Syllable includes many updates on the code, drivers, API and widgets. The OS is now more "desktop-oriented". A copy of the announcement can be found here.

The Syllable folks have released some screenshots of their AtheOS-based operating system, and also a binary of ABrowse, the Konqueror-based browser for AtheOS/Syllable. The team is looking for a kernel hacker, and more developers in general, to join the project.

Vanders and Rick yesterday officially presented Syllable, an operating system forked from AtheOS. Version 0.4.0 is available. The system is almost identical to AtheOS, therefore all software available at Kamidake should work, with the addition of the new Desktop replacement.

Almost seven months have been past since Kurt Skauen, author of the Athe(na) Operating System released version 0.3.7. As Kurt have already publicly said, some personal outstanding issues, plus because he needed some time off his project, he did not touch the AtheOS codebase since then. However, some third party AtheOS developers lately have been working on producing alternatives or improved versions of some AtheOS parts, namely, replacements for the login screen, desktop etc. We tried to contact Kurt regarding the fate of AtheOS (which seems to be facing possible forks from many fronts), but we received no reply.

Bill Hayden did the obvious: He forked AtheOS (which is technically similar to BeOS) and used its app_server and Interface Kit (without the use of X11) and rest of its kits on top of the 2.4.x Linux kernel. While the AtheOS kernel has some very nice features, by being modular, semi-microkernel, with good preemptive/multithreading support etc., it lacks a solid VM and swap support and of course, it lacks a good driver support, things that the Linux kernel provides. Bill Hayden accounced his fork on the AtheOS mailing list and made known that the "Atheos API has been merged with the BeOS API, there is PowerPC support, gcc 3.0.X compatiblity and OpenTracker/Deskbar as the desktop manager".

Norwegian ex-Amiga coder Kurt Skauen started designing & writing AtheOS in 1996. Until late 1999, AtheOS (a name derived from the Greek Goddess Athena) used to be called AltOS. AtheOS has even seen complete rewrites along the years, and today is on version 0.3.7. Come with me and see what AtheOS has to offer today to you. All your questions answered and we also include five new screenshots.

Kurt Skauen, the AtheOS developer, writes: "The main focus have still been bug fixing and optimization but I have also added a few new features to the various API's as well as a new tool for managing installation of command-line applications and a tool for adding, listing, and extracting resources to/from executable images. There is also a new set of classes and functions that help the applications to locate and load resources embedded in executable's and DLL's. Various other classes have also been added to the API and many of the existing classes has been extended. The TCP/IP stack have got an overhaul and are now performing much better than in previous versions. Especially on high-latency links. Take a look at the changes list for a more detailed list of changes since V0.3.6. Go and download the new version of AtheOS and if you have questions make sure you post them in the mailing list provided. Recently, we held an interview with Kurt where he explains a lot about the AtheOS goals and its future.

Slashdot features an interesting interview with the AtheOS creator, Kurt Skauen. Kurt talks about filesystem attributes, why XFree is not a choice for AtheOS, the GPL and lots of other things. OSNews also hosted an interview with Kurt just ten days ago, where Kurt talked in length about binary compatibility, Gcc 3, mulithreading etc

AtheOS is a modern, free (GPLed) Operating System written from scratch in C++. A big chunk of the OS is POSIX compliant, supports multiprocessing and it is GUI-oriented (fully OOP). Today we are hosting an interesting interview with the AtheOS creator, Kurt Skauen. Kurt is talking about his views on binary compatibility in future versions, multithreading and the future of his OS in general.