Syllable's Kristian Van Der Vliet Interview

Andreas Louca writes "OSNews.com has a nice interview with Syllable's Project Leader, Kristian Van Der Vliet. Syllable is one of the teams that raised off the ashes of AtheOS. They talk about the future of Syllable and the current status. "

Comments

Commodity Hardware

[kalidasa]

The most interesting part to the interview is where he starts talking about the difficulty in coding for modern hardware interfaces; he suggests that as easier-to-code interfaces like PS/2 and the floppy are rplaced with harder-to-code interfaces like USB, the end of the hobby OS may be at hand. As the barrier-to-entry for coding OSes for commodity hardware grows larger, doesn't that suggest that the opportunity for new robust OSes to evolve to compete with the established players (not only Windows, but OS X, the other BSDs, and Linux) may not exist in the future? Is it possible that the evolution of the OS may be choked by the evolution of the hardware?

Re:Commodity Hardware

[Deusy]

If it was only the hardware that was evolving, then yes this would be the case.

This is unlikely to be the case. Should it get to the point where the hardware is too many and too complicated for everybody to program for, you'll find generic interfaces to the hardware being implemented in generic assembly languages like table assembly.

Or perhaps firmware will develop further to ease driver creation.

There are many areas in which layers can develop to keep developing drivers possible for mortals. The industry isn't going to make things too difficult for itself.

Ever since the computer industry started, each extra level of complexity has seen an extra layer added to keep software creation manageable, and drivers are no exception.

Whilst Kristian's fears have foundation, there'll be ways around them even if it's as extreme as hobby OSes having to cooperate on driver development.

Re:Sounds cool, but...

[the morgawr]

Fair enough, I hope you guys are having fun and do well. I've got some question's if you'd bother to answer them.

Linux internals are very messy. BSD is a lot cleaner, clean enough that researchers chop it up for use in experimental OSes. Why not start from something that works and has solid hardware support? Was it just more fun to do it from scratch or was there a design reson why reworking an existing system or just using large chunks of code wasn't an option?

I'm no UI expert but the code for X, KDE, and GNOME isn't pretty (and from a user's stand point, the UI isn't friendly). I'm sure that you guys can do a better job. Most people won't get to enjoy the results of your labor though, because your OS isn't compatible with the vast pool of Free and Open software out there. Asking people to take such a huge jump is hard (but not imposible). Why not make a UI to work on top of what's already there? What do current systems not support or do, that you felt compelled to rewrite? What advantages does your design offer over current systems? Can you still display remotely?