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Syllable - The Little OS with a Big Future?
Vanders writes "Tired of endless Windows security problems? Intrigued by Linux's power but discouraged by its complexity? Tempted by Mac OS but not thrilled with the hardware cost? In an OSNews article, Michael Saunders takes a look at Syllable, the OS that picked up where AtheOS left off over two years ago. Michael takes you through Syllable and shows you what we have been doing these past few years."
If it can solve the problems Linux has on the desktop, namely incredibly poor software installation and ugly graphics, it might have a chance. It seems promising, but then again, so does Linux. I've been wishing Linux on to the desktop, but it just doesn't seem like it's happening.
Question: Is there any way to use Linux device drivers with this os? How hard would it be to "port" Syllable to Linux?
... sorta sniffed at it when my aging BeBox arrived at its final unsupported destination, but ... I don't remember if this project had architecture-neutrality as a spec ... and i retired the BeBox and bought a powerbook instead, abandoning x86 forever (or at least as much as possible)...
still, a powerpc port of another new and interesting OS would be an interesting endeavour. anyone care to answer the question as to how portable syllable is?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"Tempted by Mac OS but not thrilled with the hardware cost?"
Ugh, having the start menu at the top isn't really making it like MacOS, and it sure seems that's the only similar thing. It doesn't even integrate the application menus into the title bar. Another great part of MacOS is the fact it "just works." I doubt you get this with Syllable. Furthermore, the MacOS UI is a lot nicer.
Moreover, I doubt this OS will really take off with a "big future." BeOS/QNX/etc were a lot spiffier, and they didn't survive. I wish them the best of luck, however.
Hold on a sec here. I'm pretty sure this was one of those pieces of history I'm not screwing up on.
I think you're mis-remebering slightly.
As I remember it, there was no attempt by the AtheOS author to be POSIX compliant except for the purpose of running BASH and a few other utilities.
No, Syllable and AtheOS really are about 95% POSIX compliant. We even use Glibc. The only ommisions are edge cases which are not technically POSIX anyway, such as missing mmap(). Bash is the default (Pretty much only!) shell, the utilities are GNU Coreutils, Diffutils, Textutils, Sed, Grep etc. just as you would find on most Linux machines.
I remember that KHTML and other KDE software was ported to AtheOS
KHTML was ported, but nothing else. Kurt wrote Qt wrappers around the native AtheOS classes, so there is very little Qt involved in the port. It's almost exactly how Apple ported Qt to OS X. There is no X support for AtheOS or Syllable.
How is 64 Megs low memory usage?
Seems like a pretty good chunk of memory if you ask me for a less than complete OS.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Until then i'll still keep my midnight candlelight vigil until BeOS comes back.
Like totally you totally need like an Amiga, man! Dude, holy crap, the Amiga with OS/2 Warp was like the greatest system ever and you could install it on like a NeXT and it was like so cool because like... uhhh... ummm... JUST TRUST ME, IT WAS THE GREATEST OS EVER!
Except of course for JoS. And Freedows, which begat the equally successful Alliance OS.
And don't forget Haiku OS, which nobody knows what it is or why anybody'd bother working on it -- it's another one of those JoS-style "announcement engineering" projects, where they've got 200 pages of elaborate plans and a really beautiful, artistic, state-of-the-art website... But no working code and nobody trying all that hard to write any. They're too busy appointing committees and making plans to make plans to debate their plan-making proceedures.
Rule of thumb: If a project has a website already but hasn't yet released a working alpha or prototype, it's unlikely ever to release anything at all. If the website is plain-vanilla HTML 1.0, maybe there's a slim chance, but if it's got CSS? Forget it. Just a bunch of losers playing with themselves.
There aren't many things too big for two or three programmers to whack together a halfassed prototype/proof-of-concept (or at least proof that you HAVE a concept) and get it running. You don't need a website for that, and you sure as fuck don't need graphic designers and a logo. I seem to recall hearing about some Finnish guy banging out a fubar'd first crack at a Unix-ish OS kernel all by himself some years ago... And THEN he asked for volunteers.
Be Inc. gets credit for at least releasing a usable operating system (I was quite fond of it, though I didn't use it much because no useful software ran on it), but they get a big fat Cock-in-the-Face Award(TM) for providing a "solution in search of a problem" and therefore failing utterly in the marketplace.
Fixing Linux's ease of use issues would be far easier than bringing Syllable to a state where it's ready to compete with Windows. Although architecturally it appears very solid, I'd be surprised if it's able to compete with Windows 3.1 at the moment in terms of actual implemented features, from an end user's perspective. While I don't believe it's necessary to match Longhorn's feature set in all areas to be competitive, you should at least be in the same ballpark.
Now, perhaps by the time the NEXT major revision of Windows rolls around Syllable will be ready to stir up some real trouble, but Longhorn just isn't a realistic target.
I suppose you haven't seen the eMac or iBook, then. Yes, you can get a Dell for less, but are the bottom Dells as good? Will they hold up as well or last as long? Are the batteries as good?
Bitch and moan, bitch and moan. You'd think tech geeks would step up to the plate and encourage the makers of Syllable to keep up the good work, just as a matter of course. But what do we get on good ol' Slashdot?
Whining, of course. Whining that Syllable doesn't work as well as Windows or Linux, despite the fact that it's an alpha (at a 0.5 release, no less) and that it's only been in development for two years. Whining that it doesn't do everything under the sun right now! And especially whining over the fact that some poor brain-dead schmuck who has the gall to call himself 'tech-savvy' might, at some point in the future, have another choice in the field of OS's. God forbid that this pseudo-nerd should be presented with the opportunity to use another OS; this moron is already troubled by the existence of Linux (although the ten or so MS operating systems that he's installed over the years doesn't seem to bother him), and refuses to even believe that a thing like BSD exists.
Crawl back into your holes, naysayers. You aren't geeks; you aren't even good enough to aspire to geekhood. You're just one of the sheep and I, for one, would rather my food didn't pretend to sentience.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Bridging the gap between Linux and Windows? We're not trying to bridge the gap between Linux and Windows; we're trying to replace Linux on the desktop totally!
I think Syllabus..
Syllable
I'll not bother to reply to the rest of your post. It's very silly.
Syllable : It's an Operating System