Syllable 0.5.4 Released 457
AtheOSParrot writes "Version 0.5.4 of the Syllable operating system has been released. The lightweight, BeOS-alike is aimed squarely at finally realising the dream of bringing an easy-to-use, free software desktop to everyday users. 0.5.4 is a significant milestone in this direction with the integration of the new desktop, which is completely unimpeded by any legacy X-Windows foundations or toolkits beneath. This is no tin-pot bootloader with bitmaps snapped on; other features include SMP, networking, ATA/ATAPI, audio & video, 2D acceleration, GCC, USB & a 64-bit journaled FS with attributes. With desktop Linux still not having dented the 1% mark, will Syllable be the one to do to Windows what Firefox has done to IE? Also reported on OSNews.com, Golem.de and Linuxfr.org."
Ok! (Score:5, Informative)
uspace_end=0xf7ffffff enable_ata_dma=false ata_pci_force_generic=true
on ther kenel line for grub.
GCC & the other tool chains have to be downloaded etc etc..
What do I think?
Well for starters the web browser doesnt like sourceforge, so downloading the packages is a pain. Secondly it's slow. Thirdly I tried to build UAE under it, and GCC wend Zombie....
This looks nice, but it's hardly stable... maybe in a few more iterations it'll shape up.
Re:Ok! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure your setup is subpar compared to installing and running it directly.
Re:Ok! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ok! (Score:2)
Will have to get back to it at some later time I guess...
Re:Ok! (Score:2, Informative)
That's because Microsoft didn't write it, they bought it. It was written by Connectix, and originally for the Mac. I still use Connectix VPC 5.2... haven't seen any compelling reason to upgrade.
If they want Syllable to succeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If they want Syllable to succeed... (Score:2, Funny)
You pervert...
Re:If they want Syllable to succeed... (Score:2)
Re:If they want Syllable to succeed... (Score:4, Informative)
The real story of the name Syllable is this:
I hate choosing names for projects. When I decided to fork AtheOS I knew we needed a name, but I did not want to use the old and hackneyed "SomethingOS" formula that so many other small OS's were using. I also quickly realised that all the really good OS's used short names, usually two or three simple syllables E.g. Windows, Unix, BeOS.
The word syllable is three syllables. So there we go, my search was over and I could get on with more important things.
Suggested Names (Score:2, Funny)
Or, if they bundle more applications and turn it into a suite rather than just an OS, perhaps Word*, Sentence, or Paragraph.
* May already be taken
waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:waiting... (Score:3, Funny)
She's a gross-looking sub-par writer. I wish she would quit with "osnews" and her pathetic pseudo-journalism. I hate her, her bias, and her claims that such bias does not exist.
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
I sure hope not!
Would be a shame to have all the countless hours spent installing my Gentoo, go to waste...
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Actually, that's the fun part about Gentoo. The project (and community) is based on the fact that it's a little complex to install, but a lot of fun. If you don't want to install Gentoo that way, it might just not be the distribution for you.
I like the fact that there is diversity. Depending on what you expect from your system, you can choose a distribution.
Don't try to change Gentoo - it's perfect the way it is.
Even this new distribution has a goal. It aims to be user friendly. Personally, I don'
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
But why make it harder than it needs to be? If I have 12 machines in my office to install Gentoo on, why should all 12 have to be done so manually, in such a time consuming manner?
Sure, I could just use Mandrake, but I'd rather use Gentoo. But I won't pay the elite-geek tax to use it.
No wonder Microsoft still has 90%+ market share. [frowns]
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
I agree, Gentoo is the only linux distro I've ever seen that is harder to install than any of the bsd's.
An excuse (Score:4, Interesting)
The hoops are a feature.
They're designed to make the OS as customizable as possible. This is why it was originally referred to as a "metadistribution" - so customizable that you can even port it to cygwin and OSX.
Less hoops mean less more is done automatically, which means less is customizable.
Put up with the hoops and the users, developers, and documentation are more than willing to help you through them.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
And I say that Gentoo doesn't go far enough!
That's why I compile a toolchain myself, chroot to it, and then build enough of Linux to compile. Once this is done, I install it by hand into the correct directories, reboot, and build everything from source. This way I get a complete system whithout all that "emerge" bullshit.
Oh, and when I want to add a kernel patch, I don't bother to recompile the kernel, I just, "vi vmlinuz". That's good enough for me.
With those fancy precompile distros, you never know what you'll get.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Funny)
I have fitted toggle switches on the front of my PC, so I can recompile the kernel in my head and enter it into memory one bit at a time.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gentoo with an installer script would be cool too, and I imagine people
Oh no (Score:3, Funny)
All right, everybody. Brace yourselves for a flood of "what's wrong with X-Windows foundations or toolkits?!" posts!
Re:Oh no (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with X-Windows that can't be fixed in an elegant way that provides a path for future flexibility, while still maintaining the key killer features of X11: network transparency (per-window) and backwards compatibility. I think it's pretty cool I can remote login into an ancient unix machine and run an old motif app on my x.org 6.8.1 linux box with translucency and shadows. Sure you can always run an X11 thunk layer on top of the window system de jour, but i
Nah (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
Because there just isn't any burning need for it. Windows has all the users that money can buy, UNIX has the hearts and minds of all the elite power users and the research crowd while the Mac has the fashion police in it's camp. What demographic wants to be Be compatible? What major software base is unlocked by a Free implementation? None.
Re:Nah (Score:2, Insightful)
We have been hearing about Linux on the desktop for six years now. There are very specific reasons people don't use it, X-windows being one of those big reasons. The goal here is to make a fully functional OS that will appeal to the average user, when the time comes that OS software is too expensive. We are rapidly approaching the $100 computer. Maybe this OS can succeed in that market.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nah (Score:3, Insightful)
If you had said that the lack of functionality in KDE or GNOME is one major reason people aren't brought over, I'd have understood what you meant (even though I wouldn't have agreed), but you seem to point out X as the culprit.
Would you mind being a bit more specific about why, as you claim, The X Window System is one of the "those big reasons" people don't use Linux on the desktop?
Re:Nah (Score:2)
Repeat after me: X IS NOT A PROBLEM. (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit.
Perhaps it's cool for the Slashbots of the world to keep complaining about X. You've been doing it for years. You've been complaining about it while not noticing that X has been improving by leaps and bounds lately -- particularly now that some innovative people are back at the helm of X.Org and FreeDesktop.Org. There's virtually no performance penalty for network transparency, there's all that cool alpha compositing stuff in there now, and some very sophisticated desktops have been built on top of it. X IS NOT A PROBLEM.
In fact, by building a new operating system that doesn't have the X Window System in it, all you're doing is throwing away the existing pool of applications. The "average user" doesn't care how the window system was built; he only cares whether his applications run. And run they do, every time you boot up one of the millions of desktop Linux systems already in existence.
The only reason Linux has not yet penetrated the desktop market in double-digit percentages is because of the chicken-and-egg problems surrounding application development vs. end user take-up. It's happening, but it's happening very slowly. And it's not going to happen with a BeOS knockoff, because that reduces your application pool to almost zero.
True, Linux has a few more technology hurdles to overcome, such as automatic detection and mounting of various types of removable storage, and these problems are currently being addressed by projects like D-Bus. We're just about at the point of pulling past Microsoft in the desktop ease-of-use department. The problems are all people-related now.
If the marketshare of Windows is going to fall, it's going to fall to Linux and Mac, not to some BeOS knockoff. Stop deluding yourself.
Re:No performance penalty?! (Score:5, Informative)
a) The parent was discussing LOCAL network connections, not remote.
b) X works perfectly on 10Mb/s -- try it sometime. Sure, I wouldn't want to run gimp or mplayer like that, but e.g. surfing the web is fine. X certainly doesn't need 100Mb/s, and even mplayer will run fine at that speed (though of course you're better to use mplayer's built in streaming and run it locally). There is no X app which needs more than 100Mb (can Doom III run on X? that might), your theory of requiring gigabit is just crazy.
c) NoMachine is free, or rather 99.5% of NoMachine is free (the libraries that do everything). Sure, a point-and-click app is available for cash but a point-and-click app is also freely available (using the same free libraries).
X-windows being one of those big reasons? (Score:2)
99% of Windows users have never heard of X, sit them down in front of a Linux box running X and they have no concept that there is this thing called X and they are quite happy to sit using the machine, running Gnome or better, KDE. Installers are good enough these days that X configuration is handled automatically and the performance is more than acceptable (Gnome users quit bitching and switch to KDE).
Re:Nah (Score:2)
I challenge you to name any significant end-user visible difference between up-to-date versions of X11 and up-to-date versions of the Windows and Macintosh graphics subsystems. In fact, all three of them are client-server systems. If anything, the one that is furthest behind technically is the Windows graphics subsystem, which hasn't hindered its acceptance.
The goal here is to make a fully functional OS that
Re:Nah (Score:3, Interesting)
Embedded devices. (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew a developer for BeOs back when it was still in business and they thought multimedia Kiosk type systems were going to be almost ubiquitous. The advantage was for the low latency high availability type stuff, not to mention stability. Far as I know to get this type of performance from linux you have to hack the kernal extensively (too lazy to look up the audio focused distro that has l
Re:Nah (Score:5, Informative)
The article should probably have said that it seemed similar to the author. It isn't meant to be similar, but it can be seen that way. It isn't meant to be a clone like Haiku or BlueEyedOS or any of the others. It is its own entity. There are similarities which are probably because it is a modern non-UNIX OS design. There aren't many of them. Everything else seems to date from the Windows era or older or be UNIX-like. I'm sure that's an overgeneralization, but comparisons to Be were kinda inevitable if for no other reason than they are both designed for a GUI and not command line, they are both designed to use C++ in a simple way to make application writing easier, they are both meant for the desktop and not the server, they were both designed with journaled filesystems in mind, etc.
I think the similarities are simply a product of designing something in today's day that is meant only for the desktop.
Re:Nah (Score:3, Informative)
I got a secondhand copy of the last release of BeOS and installed it... and discovered that it had no driver for the network card I had (IIRC an 8139 chipset card) and I had to boot into Linux, scour the internet for a driver, copy it onto a floppy, boot into BeOS and install the driver.
Then I discovered that BeOS had no support for NFS nor windows filesharing so I couldn't copy anything else onto it from the network shares where I'd downloade
Re:Nah (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nah (Score:2)
I mean its not as if it was an oddball NIC. And its not as if samba or NFS are unusual in a networking environment.
Re:Nah (Score:3, Insightful)
i agree that it's annoying to have to download the driver the first time, but i've had to download drivers for common hardware for linux distro's before.
Two silly bulls? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, another great Christmas tradition: explaining the rules eight times to the Thicky Twins. The round hasn't in fact started yet. It's got to be a specific book. For instance, if it was The Bible, I would go like that [holding up two fingers] to indicate that there are two syllables in it...
Prince:
Two what?
Edmund:
Two syllables.
Prince:
Two silly bulls? I don't think so, Blackadder -- not in The Bible. I can remember a fatted calf, but, as I recall, that was quite a sensible animal. Oh, ah! It's it, um, er, Noah's Ark, with the, er, two pigs, two ants, and two silly bulls? Is that it?
Edmund:
Two syllables.
Prince:
What?
Edmund:
Look, we're getting confused; let's start again, shall we?
Prince:
No, let's not, Blackadder. I think the whole game's getting a bit sylla, to be honest. How about a nice Christmas story instead?
Re:Two silly bulls? (Score:2)
Still only X86 support... (Score:2)
They all look the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They all look the same (Score:2)
KDE is handy. Gnome is handy. What else would you suggest? (Remember how many years it took both KDE and Gnome to get as good as they currently are.)
OTOH, I've seen examples that seem based on blackbox, or twm. They haven't interested me, any more than they do most people. (And I suspect that you would accuse OpenStep of looking like KDE, even though it's got an older pedigree, and if anything KDE looks like it.)
Re:They all look the same (Score:2)
Did you look at the screenshots? http://syllable.org/screenshots.php
I dont see it looking like KDE, it has basic features as most os's. Now if you can expand on exactly what features are like KDE, then that would be an insightful post.
I mean, if you're going to write an entirely new operating system, and then just use *nix apps on top of it, why even bother?
First, no X-windows that
Re:They all look the same (Score:3, Informative)
Nowadays, the Syllable advantage is much less pronounced. The API is still there (efforts are underway for implementing similar APIs on Linux), Linux h
Agreed, no real user benefit (Score:2)
Re:Agreed, no real user benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter what I do to try and tweak my Linux desktop, so
Re:They all look the same (Score:4, Funny)
Good point. But look on the positive side... it could have looked like GNOME.
Why not ? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would have happened if everyone told Linus "there's already Windows, Minix, Hurd, OMU.. why bother' ?
Alan
Re:Why not ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They all look the same (Score:2)
The GUI looks like an Amiga. Is Syllable an AmigaOS clone?
No. In the beginning, AtheOS was actualy meant to be one, but these days there is nothing resembling the AmigaOS in Syllable other than the default window borders. Syllable has over half a dozen different window decorators which are installed by default. For example, you may have noticed that many of the screens
Re:They all look the same (Score:2)
Which is exactly what the fvwm users said when WindowMaker came out with its giant image-quality icons.
Kinda sick of this nonsense... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't some "far away dream" to "someday" have Linux work as a desktop OS. It's here now. People all around the world use it as their sole OS on the desktop and get along fine with it.
So the FUD of "Linux isn't "here" yet on the desktop" is just nonsense.
It's here there and everywhere...all you have to do is open your eyes. But I suppose if it doesn't work exactly like Windows then it can't be "here" yet. Then I guess OS/X isn't "here" yet either.
Re:Kinda sick of this nonsense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there already (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX is a very fast desktop oriented OS and it is the only desktop OS capable of really competing in a market whose needs go beyond the strictly utilitarian, like the home market. When a complete novice wants to install something from a CD on OSX all they do is drag the
I like Linux, but it really isn't there yet. The majority of the people I know at least, would be scared to death of it.
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:2)
My experience using 7 distros over the past 6 years has been very mixed, to say the least, but that does not mean that there are not some extremelyy good desktop distros out there. My main powerhouse runs Gentoo and I love it. Very desktop ready. "9 year old's bicycle with training wheels" doesn't quite capture it, somehow.
So Gentoo on the high end (poweruser). I post this from my laptop running SuSe Professionsal 9.1. Again, v
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:5, Insightful)
Does everything have to behave like everything else? OSX is very elegant...so what? I enjoy KDE...I think it's very elegant. Who's right and who's wrong?
OSX is right for you. KDE is right for me. But just because OSX is a nice UI doesn't mean everything else is crap.
And more to the point, Linux is the Harley...where you can tinker with it and customize it totally to become anything you want. While OSX is more like a crotch-rocket Ninja or whatever the kids are riding now adays. Very sleek, very fast...but can't really be totally (and I mean totally) customized to where you want it.
Thanks for the analogy...you just had it mixed up. Glad I could set you straight.
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Linux and all its apps are
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, like it or not, by giving Apple control over the operating system of your machine you make it possible for them to sabotage any serious com
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:4, Insightful)
Complete novices don't install applications on their machines at all--they use whatever comes preinstalled. That's why both Apple and PC vendors sell machines with entire software suites preinstalled.
with Linux you either have to use some vendor specific tool to manage the myriad dependencies or run rpm manually.
There is nothing to "manage": the major Linux distributions handle all the dependencies for you. That's a big advantage Linux has over both Windows and Macintosh.
Linux is a great desktop, provided you want to only use the software that you are given by the distributor
Yes, that's quite right. And unlike Macintosh, Linux vendors give their users single-stop solutions for all their software needs.
OSX, all that is quite unnecessary.
Installing and maintaing software on OS X is a lot of work: for most third party applications, you have to manually download, install, and update applications. If there are dependencies, you have to track those down manually as well.
Worse, unlike Windows, Macintosh doesn't even have a single, consistent way of installing or removing packages.
Re:Speak for yourself, OSX is more than there alre (Score:3, Informative)
Hah!
While is was a bit easier than KDE/GNOME, it certainly did not have more flexibility or power. By "a bit easier", I really mean "marginally easier". Some areas of the desktop were actually more complicated than what I was used to.
Don't mistake me for ragging on OSX.
You already had learned (Score:3, Informative)
You know, I was used to Windows (mostly NT4), and I got a Mac because I heard so much good about OS X. I was lost, angry, disapointed. I hated my Mac. Why did I spend over 2000€ for this piece of crap? No, seriously...after two weeks of usage, I learnt that my mind had been deformed by Micosoft Windows. I let Windows loose, an
Re:Kinda sick of this nonsense... (Score:2)
This is a non-argument. If we were use this sort of thinking then Mac-OSX isn't "here" yet either since all the unwashed masses still use Windows...right? So a desktop operating system is only good or "here" if everyone uses it. So following your "logic" then only Windows is the desktop that's here now. Everything else isn't ready for the desktop yet. Right?
So please, Linux isn't hard t
Syllable Development Newsletter (Score:4, Informative)
The latest Development Newsletter just arrived too, summarizing recent developments in the community. It's a great way to keep up-to-date with the project -- no need to trawl through the mailing lists.
See September's issue, and more, here:
http://msa.section.me.uk/sdn/ [section.me.uk]
Additionally, a Flash demo can be found on this page [zen.co.uk].
Ooooh (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why should it? (Score:2, Insightful)
It'd be easy to make a drag-drop gui for any of the package managers you mentioned, but it's no particular gain over using a graphical package manager since a) it's not like you're buying software on a CD from a store and b) except for the largest software projects and the most popular distros
Coral cache link (Score:3, Informative)
Nah (Score:2)
Re:Coral cache link (Score:2)
QEMU (Score:2)
Linux Alternatives for the Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Linux Alternatives for the Desktop (Score:2)
Actually, QNX is not a bad desktop system at all. I'd say it's better than Windows is (stable, light on resources, POSIX-compliant). It doesn't run the applications that are popular on Windows (to my knowledge), but that doesn't make it worse - at most less suitable.
``why does the open source community always feel it must clone everything?''
I'm with you on that one. Especially when they clone Windowsisms. However, QNX is a truly great s
Nope (Score:2)
The developers should give it their best, but I see no reason to expect this to have better luck than gnu/linux in taking away windows marketshare.
Of all the typical reasons that gnu/linux is not yet the dominant OS (inertia, user familiarity with windows, games, office software, simplicity), I don't see any
Re:Nope (Score:3, Informative)
How is this different?,... (Score:2)
ahh (Score:3, Insightful)
Or legacy applications or games...
Nah, I'm just messing, I wish them luck. Maybe I'll try it out, I always had a thing for obscure OSes.
Just FYI for the downloaders... (Score:2, Informative)
The 'LiveCD' download link for Syllable doesn't have any files currently.
I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course they can do whatever they want, but I wonder if they have considered that their efforts could be directed to Linux development instead. But don't get me wrong, I think they're doing a good job and their efforts should be applauded.
If only we could boot it..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would love to try my hand at helping to port software over, even if it is nothing more than working on helping to get Python ported over and write native bindings for Syllable. But I don't have the time to hack away at a hobbyist OS that won't even boot on common hardware. If it only works in VMWare, it might as well not work at all for me. Even the hacked new distros of BeOS booted on that hardware for God's sake!
The syllable guys need to spend more of their time working on getting such basic necessities as actually having it bootable on all common hardware before they even think of challenging Windows. Firefox is a bad project to compare Syllable to because Firefox is built on an incredibly mature foundation that is over 5 years and millions of dollars of corporate R&D money in the making. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Mozilla proper actually closing in on 6-7 years old now?
What would really help is if some of the Linux kernel hackers would take a break from Linux and work on the Syllable kernel. OSS does need a plan B for the desktop, and going from Fedora or Mandrake to Debian sadly doesn't count
Blank is to Windows as FireFox is to IE (Score:5, Insightful)
FireFox was the browser that was supposed to be targeted at people knowledgable enough to install it, who we're limited by the IE experience.
When we talk about Desktop Linux for example, we often talk about "easy enough for my grandma to use" which is precicely the wrong litmus test. I've been idlling on a linux distro at home some, and my goal has always been to make the Linux distro that all the XP power users want to use.
Think about it. Every windows user I know who ran or runs IE has a popup blocker installed, the google toolbar, AdAware, and has half a dozen windows open most of the time. FireFox is perfect for them, because it was targeted at them. Grandma (well, not mine, she won't touch the computer, and my grandfather is a computer geek) will just click on the three icons she knows how to use - Linux, Windows, SkyOS, Syllable, Macintosh, it's all pretty colors to her. So don't target her!
I've got an OS here. It's multiuser design makes it hard to get viruses or for your sister to install spyware which screws over everybody else. It comes with a firewall, it comes with antivirus, it comes with a multiprotocol instant messeging client, it comes with a tabbed browser, it comes with a pop up blocker, it comes with a spam filter, it comes with a word processor, it comes with a spreadsheet, it comes with an image editor. It comes with all of the things you pirate to make your pirate copy of WinXP not suck, all nicely polished and working together out of the box. It's legal, it's free, it's simple, it's featureful. It doesn't dumb things down for your Grandma, it doesn't pander you with saturated colors and friendly but unhelpful error messages, it doesn't talk down to you for not already understanding everything about it. It's the OS for people who care what OS they're running.
Build it and they will come. Be it Syllable, SkyOS, Linux, BSD, or hell, Windows.
From the FAQ: (Score:2, Insightful)
A: No, you have to use the Terminal. Syllable is designed around its own GUI and cannot support a text-only interface.
Isn't that the same mistake Microsoft has been making since Windows 95?
Wheres the live CD????? (Score:2)
On there is a link to download it, and followed for the live CD.
The link is dead!!!
from their site (emphasis mine):
LiveCD4
This LiveCD is based on LiveCD3, but makes use of a RAM disk, which makes it stable, without the need for floppy disks, or other obscure things.
It's as easy as it can get: Download - Burn - Boot!
BurningShadow - 21/8-04 18:15:15
This LiveCD does not include the possibility to install Syllable.
By downloading InstCD1 you can get a Syllable i
Syllable desktop, linux Server? (Score:4, Informative)
Could a Syllable desktop world with Linux Servers become a working combo.
Since applications in the FOSS world can be recompiled/ported/developed to run on both, for those applications it makes sense to have on both.
For those how want both on the same system there can use VM applications to run
Syllable on Linux or Linux on Syllable. Or they could be even more closely integrated.
BitTorrent? (Score:2, Redundant)
No it won't (Score:5, Insightful)
No it won't, because Linux has something that took it a lot of time to achieve: mindshare. At best, Syllable can be a training OS that is unencumbered by Unix's long history to develop things that haven't been done before. Then those ideas can be ported to Windows and/or Linux.
Having said all that, I hope the Syllable team can prove me wrong.
A pointless distraction (Score:3, Insightful)
But the best thing to do with it now is abandon it.
To make an OS useful requires a ton of device drivers. These guys have barely scratched the surface of what's needed. Even today, after thousands of man-years of effort, GNU/Linux hasn't achieved the level of driver support that Windows has.
Abandoning X has the consequence that lots of apps will not run on Syllable. Seems a giant leap backwards. Presumably, Syllable is aimed only at home users who just have one PC? Somebody who has a LAN is going to want X. I couldn't work without it.
The free-software community has barely enough resources to support one OS really well. GNU/Linux needs all the work we can put into it. Trying to promote a competitor will, if successful, divide our resources and make it much harder to establish any free operating system as a serious competitor to Windows on the desktop.
I still see bash (Score:2, Interesting)
With the same old toolchain, how new can it be? (Score:2)
anachronism (Score:3, Insightful)
It is Syllable that is the "legacy design" here. The entire industry is finally moving to more dynamic languages (Java, C#, Python, VB.NET, Objective C), dynamic GUI configuration (XUL, Glade, Avalon), vector graphics (SVG, Render, DisplayPDF), and client-server GUI models (XP-GDI, DisplayPDF, X11).
While one can discuss the relative merits of those technologies, relative to any of them, an OS with a GUI based on a huge C++ GUI library [other-space.com] is an anachronism. Except for Syllable's nifty graphics, Smalltalk-80 looks like it was more advanced and flexible technology a quarter of a century ago.
Why can't they all just get along... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the leaders of a few of these groups would get together and work on one project, there's a slim chance that it might get somewhere. If I were going to try to organize something, I'd be looking seriously at OpenBeOS, as it has all the API documentation nicely created for it. But hey, it's never going to happen, and MS will continue to rule the desktop, with Linux being a lowly contenter waiting in the wings, never to really get a chance.
kiwi
Re:just because they're aimed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, just because anyone aims to do anything doesn't mean they will actually succeed! Its not new unless it is a 100% finished product!
Come on. Its a milestone release. Quit functional for a
Or
What exactly is wrong with X ? (Score:3)
Drivers: good, but we still need the latest hardware support, and yesterday. nVidia's binary driver is actually very good, but a GPL one would be far nicer. Not really X's fault.
Configuration: XF86Config isn't especially pleasant. That said, most distros set this up anyway, so
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What exactly is wrong with X ? (Score:2)
Like painting a ship in a bottle. (Score:3, Informative)
For example, it specifies the behavio
Re:just because they're aimed... (Score:4, Funny)
Developer: "I'm working on Y. It is a better version of X!"
OSS community: "You foolish mortal! You should be working on X! Not Y! You can't possibly best X!"
Developer: "I like working on Y though!"
OSS community: "You're just wasting your time, work on X and make it like Y!"
Just look at what happened with Freedows??? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Looked interesting, but.... (Score:2)