Slashdot Mirror
A Talk With Syllable OS Lead Developer Kaj de Vos
angry tapir writes "I recently had a chance to interview Kaj de Vos, the lead developer of Syllable: An open source desktop operating system that's not based on Linux nor one of the BSDs. There's a write-up of the interview here, which includes some background on the project. I have also posted the full Q&A, which is very long but definitely worth a read."
what not a bsd or gnu derivative omg shades of PARC something new?
INFORMATIVE!!
OSNews.com missed this. As usual. Back to slashdot.
Seriously? The first few words on the site's page talks about how it was built and specifically mentions it uses Linux. 'The hell?!
I know this isn't the first time a summary on slashdot wasn't completely wrong, but sheesh!
Look, in reality, if a new OS today isn't Linux or BSD (at least source code) or Windows compatible, forget about it. The apps make the OS these days. The words "critical mass" keep coming to mind. BeOS, as wonderful as it is/was, did not come at the right time and could not get the apps to make it useful enough to appeal to the masses.
Why did they code it in assembly? Given that the x86 world is, as the interviewers stated, b/w Windows/OS-X and Linux/BSD, couldn't they have done it in C, and let some other microprocessor vendors based on things like MIPS, Power, ARM, et al spin boxes w/ these?
web.syllable.org? No! Why? Just when the irritating "www." prefix is beginning to finally die a natural death, someone thinks it's a good idea to rework it. Just let it die, ffs!
If you're only going to read one page of this article then read page five.
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/398892/developer_q_syllable_os/?pp=5
To summarise the thing that makes this different from everyone else is that the parts of an actual application are split up unix style. For example instead of having two or more applications taking your photo and taking out the red eye, the desktop would have thus functionality written once and the applications will simply glue all these standard pieces together.
My only criticism to this is that we already have this in the form of libraries. Perhaps what this guy is after is something more standardised and higher level then that but I don't see how that's not doable in linux.
On indoor pictures, you want to remove the 'red eye effect' caused by the flash. On outdoor pictures, you notice the horizon isn't straight and you would like to correct that.
"These are common, but technically complicated manipulations on pictures. The correction of red eyes may be offered by multiple applications on your system. The straightening of horizons may require you to buy yet another image manipulation application.
"Why can't you plug in the camera, have its icon appear on your desktop without extra software and click on it, then click on a picture and be offered one option to correct red eyes and one option to straighten a horizon?
Clearly there are difficulties doing this, but it seems like something useful if you can figure out a way to make it work.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
not based on Linux nor one of the BSDs
At least the server edition is based on the Linux kernel according to the about page.
Furthermore:
It uses the GCC compiler and many other tools from the GNU project.
So it is also, at least for a significant part, GNU based.
(Note that people often talk about GNU/Linux if they say Linux, so to be certain I show that it is also GNU based.)
I read an awful lot of blurb on their site ( and didn't read the whole interview, because I refuse to click on "Next Page" buttons ), but I didn't see anywhere the answer to "Why should I use Syllable Desktop ?".
Nevermind, the desktop variant is indeed not Linux based. (I should have read the FAQ before I posted.)
Dumb question from a noob:
I want to go on the internets via Syllabe and I have an external (USB) network card... I simply won't be able to install it (as in: Windows installer)?
(So generally, anything Windows-specific needs to be installed and run under an emulator?)
On both the TechWorld articles, I see an icon named "Prompt" and an window titled "Syllable Terminal". On web.syllable.org, the "Prompt" icon has been renamed "Terminal". Where is this "console" and what games does it play?
Now, if only it could tell to which HOST you intended to connect within that domain.
Oh, could it be the one serving web pages?
Every organization operating on the Internet should have a primary public-facing view of the organization through the Internet, its "store front" so to speak. As World Wide Web has overtaken Gopher, this public-facing view has come to be a web site. Therefore, the organization's bare domain should be an alias (CNAME) for the host that provides this public-facing view.
If only there was some sort of moniker to distinguish them from, say, a file server, or an advertising server...
Servers providing large file downloads (generally HTTP on a high-bandwidth plan instead of a low-latency plan) can have separate hostnames within a domain. People are split over where to put advertising and other relatively small images. Some think it should be on the same hostname as the primary web server in order to share HTTP pipelines and make ads harder to distinguish from articles, while others think it should be on a separate domain entirely so that the user's session cookie isn't sent several times.
Anyone remember? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
I ran it on an old AMD K6-2 with a Voodoo 3 3000 graphics card.
But this is what the OS API, frameworks, and libraries are for.
Exactly. However, I would take it a step further and suggest that the overall idea to push this much application level functionality into OS libraries should be Considered Harmful.
.NET Framework is a good example because it is very basic and allows apps to explicitly target different framework levels (and the OS allows having multiple versions installed).
"Don't write your own red eye correction code, it's built into the OS! Oh, wait, now I see that your new version only works correctly with version 1.5 of the library that's not in my current OS release. Guess I have to upgrade the *whole OS* to install your new software."
Yes, this happens in all OS's (cf. DirectX). However, increasing the surface of these kinds of dependencies to this degree seems like a bad plan.
I'm all for code reuse, but I would prefer it if most apps were statically compiled and included all their dependencies. I am also fine with having a few, very stable external dependencies; the
The alternative is DLL Hell (and/or weird gymnastics to try to avoid it) and all too often these dependency patches that get pushed out ("fixed once in dependency library, now fixed everywhere!") don't pan out as intended and break one app or another.
Statically compiled binaries would be "huge" but again, disk space is "free" in these amounts. As a user, do I really care if a particular app weighs in at 3 MB or 150 MB anymore? Naturally, a binary diff patch system like Chrome's would go a long way to mitigating the bandwidth required to keep these up to date.
Oh well. While I'm wishing, I want a moon rocket too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really?
From the Syllable website:
"Syllable Desktop is an original, modern operating system design, in the tradition of the Amiga and BeOS, but built using many parts from the GNU project and Linux."
and
"Syllable Server is a small and efficient Linux operating system. It uses the Linux kernel and is compatible with Linux software, but is otherwise built to be as similar as possible to Syllable Desktop, using mostly the same parts."
So, let's see, it's not based on Linux, but it's built using parts from the GNU project and Linux, or it's a small and efficient Linux operating system.
But it's not based on Linux.
Riiiiight.