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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."
Is their web site powered by Syllable? And can it withstand the /.?
Now *there* was a great OS. Small, lean, easy to use, ran great. I know there's an attempt at an opensource BeOS but it seems to be a long way away. I looked at Syllables website, atleast they have a livecd, I might as well try it, got nothing to lose. Until then i'll still keep my midnight candlelight vigil until BeOS comes back.
Poor software installation ? Have you ever seen apt-get and portage ?
AtheOS was written in 100% assembler as a pet project by the guy who wrote it
The kernel is written in C. The high level stuff is written in C and C++.
He (and others) later built some POSIX, KDE and GTK API mappings..
The AtheOS kernel has always been about 95% POSIX compliant. There are no KDE or GTK API's for Syllable; it has always had it's own C++ API and appserver.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Furthermore, it shouldn't be necessary to use a CLI, ever.
I agree. I would further propose that it shouldn't be necessary to use a GUI, ever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's not, at least not where it matters to the user! Consider:
/etc/conf.modules. In Syllable, just copy the driver into a directory.
Driver installation. In Linux, mess around compiling your kernel and/or modprobing modules and editing
User-interface: single toolkit and desktop, sane design. Consistency is the result.
Plus, there are other things. The initscripts are cleaner and shorter (one of the factors involved in the sub-10-second boots), the GUI subsystem is like X and a toolkit all-in-one, and others.
So install it, and you'll see that it's not as complex at all!
The KHTML port is a total dead end; maintaining it is a nightmare. I hope we'll have a port of Gecko within the next 12 months, which will hopefully be much easier to maintain as it is designed to be portable. Personally I think we need stronger debugging tools before anyone tackles a large codebase like Gecko, so I intend to work on the development toolchain some more and then maybe tackle Gecko.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Well gosh you could have had that since before Linux, I suggest you walk over to GNU.org and download yourself the Hurd!
Regards,
Steve
..so why wouldn't you start with a Linux kernel that supports just about every graphics and sound board on the planet...
Not to be too crude, but it is because the Linux driver model sucks large Dyson Spheres through capilary tubing. It has an extremely high Lovelace value. Anyway, the Linux and Syllable kernel APIs (I'm talking about the driver->kernel API, not the API's that define how a driver is managed) are very similiar, so much so that most drivers are ported from Linux in about a week or two. The SiS 900 NIC driver was ported by Michael Krugger in half a day. I ported the Ymfpci OSS driver in about a week of a few hours a day. Syllable has the advantage of being able to draw on a large driver codebase while at the same time totally avoiding what many of us see has the total sucktitude of Linux driver management in general.
Maybe gstreamer is a good support library for what you're doing, perhaps not.
Actually, ffmpeg drives almost all of the media codecs currently available.
Syllable did not spring into life from a total vacum. It was forked from AtheOS, when AtheOS was already at quite an advanced stage. Kurt wrote AtheOS for fun. I and many other developers thought AtheOS was very cool, and I created Syllable to keep it alive and keep it cool. If I were to sit down today, and AtheOS and Syllable did not exist, I would probably do exactly as you describe and start with Linux. I don't think it would be half as well designed as Syllable is.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
(I'm a member of the Syllable community.)
We are not trying to bridge any supposed gap between Linux and Windows. We're dissatisfied with Windows as a desktop OS, and we're dissatisfied with Linux as a desktop OS. So, we're working on a completely different OS that meets our needs.
We do not expect every modern home user to use Syllable.
I honestly find the final argument in thebdj's post humorous. It reminds me of the "Everything that can be invented, has been invented" argument, and reminds me of the arguments against Linux five to ten years ago, which suggested that Windows and MacOS were "enough."
thedbj's reading an awful lot into the Syllable project that simply isn't there. When I look at the tremendous amount of work being put into Syllable for such little reward, the idea that we're making Syllable simply to be cool is ludicrous.