Meet Syllable
Short description
Syllable was originally created as a friendly, Unix-like graphics system for use on home computers and small open source offices under the GNU GPL license. It looks like Linux, but it is a completely independent system with its own kernel, its own libraries and user interface. It uses an open modular and fairly stable core. The origins lead to the "extinct" AtheOS, published in March 2000. AtheOS was a promising project that included the concepts of AmigaOS and BeOS. Unfortunately, soon the development of AtheOS stopped, and then completely closed. However, there were people who were not indifferent to the fate of this promising operating system, and in 2002 a new OS was assembled from the AtheOS source codes, continuing the AtheOS tradition - Syllable. Syllable is 99% (and maybe already 100%) compatible with POSIX standards and has many built-in applications that perform various functions inherent to a desktop computer, such as browsing the Web (browser ABrowse), working with mail (Whisper email client ), multimedia playback (ColdFish and Media Player players) and so on. The founder is considered to be Christian Van der Vliet (Kristian Van Der Vliet), better known as Vanders. Now on the development of actively working with a dozen people, including:
Arno Klenke is a programmer for the Syllable project. Works on ABrowse, a desktop and many Syllable drivers;
Kai de Vos (Kaj de Vos) - developer of the Builder system (analogue of Ports from FreeBSD) in Syllable;
Henrik Isaksson (Henrik Isaksson) - the developer of the appserver-layer GUI in Syllable;
Rick Caudill - developer of desktop tools, as well as source code editors;
Brent P. Newhall (Brent P. Newhall) - Webmaster of the official site of Syllable;
Flemming H. Sorensen (Flemming H. Sorensen) - responsible for localization, LiveCD and developer of a number of applications for Syllable.
')
All of them are part of the team SPT (Syllable Project Team). The file system in Syllable inherited from AtheOS (AFS), is 64-bit and journaling, which is very good.
System startup
After seeing a few screenshots and having looked through various information on the official Russian site of the project ru.syllable.org/pages/index.html , I decided to take a closer look at this OS, find out what Syllable is and whether it is as good as the developers say. On the download set the Russian version. The image is a LiveCD version, which is very well suited for testing such systems, allowing you to run the operating system directly from disk without installing it. The image itself takes about 151MB and it made me happy, there was a hope that they stuffed a large pile of programs there. I will run the image through qemu with 256MB of RAM, which is more than enough:
For this purpose, you can use other virtual machine emulators, such as Oracle VirtualBox (under Win32, Linux, MacOS), VirtualPC (Win32), VMWare (propiretary). But it would be better if you burn the image to disk and boot from it. System requirements are minimal - 233MHz processor, 64MB RAM and VESA video card. Just remember, it does not work with a USB keyboard! So let's go!
Loading
As soon as the download started, the good old GRUB appeared on the screen. It is the old version 0.97, not 2, which pleased me too. Its menu offers a choice of several boot options, for example, safe mode, VESA graphics mode, non-Hyper Threading mode support and a special mode for those who run Syllable via Virtual PC. I decided to use the default mode. Immediately begins the boot system. It passes very quickly, informing the user in detail about what is happening at the moment. In appearance - a blue sullen screen on which various debugging information quickly flashes. Not very nice and scary children, but informative and fast. As in Linux:
Although some kind of panic messages appeared during the download (something like Panic: flush_block_list () failed !! ), the system started up normally. Then, as I expected, a login screen appeared. It turned out to be pretty cute, with a selection of user icons (this means that the system is multi-user), a password entry line and a button to turn off / reboot. Correctly they say that the entrance hall is the face of the house :). The user here seems to be the only one available for login - root. The password is also root (this is logical):
Of course, I remember the commandment of the wise men not to sit under the root, but there is no other choice. When I started my account, Syllable cursed about network problems. It's okay, it should be. That's all OSes loaded. Very fast, 15 seconds! That's what it means to cleverly write startup scripts (or simply nothing to run). Before me was the desktop.
First impressions
The first impressions that arise when looking at the desktop, so it is that somewhere I have already seen it. Oh yeah, this theme of icons I have on my GNOME'e - Tango is called.
A big plus of this system, in my opinion, is the unity of the desktop and OS, but a terminal is also available. It’s like in Macintosh or Windows, thanks to which applications always look the same “vtemu”, a minimum of dependencies and high speed of application execution. On the desktop, the developers placed 7 icons, including a terminal, a basket, a link to the home directory, the “Disks” directory (this is “My Computer” type), as well as a non-working reference to an html document. At the top there is a dock with a button-logo - the letter S is of a blue color in the orange circle, near this logo, icons of running programs appear (By the way, I want to say that applications are minimized to the taskbar as in Windows 7 - just an icon without signatures is shown. you can not say - the year 2007). This is the main menu from which programs and settings are launched, as well as the logout button. The context menu, in my opinion, is poorer than ever - click on the desktop on the desktop, and in response we only create a folder. I do not understand why the developers did not put there, at least, to update the desktop and terribly enrages when they cut down this useful feature (as in the third gnome). The context menu of desktop elements will be better and richer: “Open with help ...”, “Information ...”, “Rename”, “Move to Trash”, “Delete ...”. Well, let's not dwell on this, we look further. The axis is quite well translated into Russian, which I was very surprised and pleased. Not ukrainian, і tse close. Out of habit, the first application launched by me on new and unknown axes is the console. Here the terminal is the familiar ATerm, which I use in Linux with vte. The first thing I enter there is the command 'uname -a', to which I get the answer:
Now you can see that the system uses its own kernel and for which architecture it is compiled. Next, let's see what my name is: enter “whoami”. In response, I get that I am a root user. Other GNU commands are also available here, for example ls, pwd, cat, cd, ps aux, top, kill, mount, and so on. As a shell, use the old-kind and time-tested Bash, so the Unicsoids will be right at home here! Well, now let's climb on the system settings with a graphical interface. When you first access the S-menu, the program database is updated. This can be understood by the window with the progress bar. The programs are located in the “Other” item (strangely somehow), and the settings in the “Settings” item. There are enough settings there. Appearance, time, desktop, dock, fonts, keyboard, localization, account, multimedia, network, screen, users - all this and more can be customized in just a couple of clicks. Not bad! In all settings, convenient, and most importantly, understandable even for the uninitiated person menu. Straight for housewives of the XXI century: 3. It seems that with the ease of use, I completely agree with the developers. There are very nice wallpapers, I liked them and there were a lot of them. Glory to the artists! Well, since there are beautiful wallpapers, it would be a sin not to make a couple of beautiful themes. Yes, there is such a thing. I counted eight window decorations. They are not bad, but not great. I saw all of them somewhere - Amiga, NeXT, Windows 98 and some others. Nothing special. I wonder if it's possible to download themes for this OS somewhere? The good thing is the dock. It contains the S-menu, icons of open programs, as well as applet plug-ins. It’s great, but I don’t really like any applets myself. There are plenty of them in Syllable, and I think you can download more of them. All the settings can not be described, so understand them yourself, all the more it is easy, and I turn to another part of your story - the program!
Software
The main thing that boasts Syllable, so it is easy to install programs. All you need is to unpack the archive with the program in the / Application directory. Similar is in Mac OS X. Delete program - delete the folder. And most importantly, no trouble with dependencies and libraries! Well, what could be better ?? But this is only with native applications. Ported programs are recommended to be placed in / usr, and then registered with the pkgmanager -a [directory] command. You can remove a ported application using the pkgmanager -r [directory] command. Porting applications is relatively easy; Syllable itself uses the C / C ++ programming interface and the format of ELF executable files. Therefore, some open source applications have already been assembled, such as DosBox, PHP, QEmu and others. I will be very happy to see such programs as GIMP, OpenOffice and games - Nexuiz and Quake 3 Arena under Syllable in the near future. To compile applications from source codes, use time-tested gcc.
FileBrowser. Probably one of the most important indicators for user-friendliness of the system for a standard user, is a file manager. Unfortunately, I could find out its name only by going through the running processes, there are no About's in it. However, the name itself does not shine with originality - FileBrowser. At first glance, it is rather primitive, but in the process of working you understand that everything unnecessary has been thrown out of it, leaving only the most necessary: ​​the “Forward”, “Back”, “Up”, “Home” buttons and the change view button. There is nothing specific, all its functions are probably in all other file managers. But he is very fast and eats quite a bit of RAM - so he is lightweight. I am a fan of dual panel managers. I would rate it at 3+, and for use I would look for something more functional.
Abrowse Every self-respecting OS contains a web browser, and Syllable is no exception. Here it is called ABrowse. Well, I do not even know how to say it. It looks like a good one, and it supports tabs. But in fact, it turned out to be one of the most inconvenient browsers that I have seen and used. In the settings - only proxy, and the possibilities of tabs tend to zero. Present only, there is not even a file open button - the file name has to be entered in the address bar. Also in it you can not save pages, choose the encoding and more.
His reputation is saved only by using the KHTML engine, which successfully works in Konqueror and Safari, so there should not be any special problems with displaying pages. But he opened my website absolutely wrong - only the left menu (and even those with errors), and the rest of the frames are just a white background. Perhaps it does not comply with w3c standards, as it incorrectly displays pages with frames. And so it is relatively fast. On a five-point system, I appreciated by 2. Good people, for God's sake, rewrite this monster, this is still OpenSource! Or port some other, more comfortable, which has more settings and features, for example, FireFox or Epiphany!
AEdit. AEdit is a standard text editor. Here it turned out to be very good!
All the necessary functions - at hand, support tabs (albeit primitive), a pleasant and easy-to-use interface. I liked that search and replace does not appear in a separate dialog box, but from the bottom as a panel - it seemed to me very convenient, as in KWrite / Kate with KDE 4. It does not support syntax highlighting, which makes it a bit inconvenient for developers but I think he has a good future. Definitely much better than Notepad. I rated it at 4+ and would use it in practice. I wonder if it supports plugins?
Albert. Here is another application that pleased me - this is a calculator, Albert. A calculator is a necessary thing, you always need to calculate something. But not all and not always take it seriously. And here the developers did their best to create such a tool. At first glance, the most common calculator, but if you dig deeper, you realize that this is not the easiest tool for counting numbers. It contains the most necessary constants, there are about 15. There are many windows with a calculator - you can open several auxiliary windows. There is a paper scroll - the history of calculations (it is very convenient when I made a mistake and it is necessary to trace exactly where); the H-base allows you to convert numbers to different bases on the fly (even to Roman ones - I have never seen this before).
Summing up I will say that shaking thought that this axis will be something like Visopsys or the like. Ie nothing special. But it turned out much better. The system turned out to be simple and convenient, as well as very unassuming to the power of the computer. And while writing the last lines of this article, I still cannot understand why there is so little information about it, why so few people know about it? I feel sorry for those developers who work for the good of society, invest so much effort and money, and ... no one uses it anyway. It's a shame, because the system is good. I would take it on bail some IT mastodon like Novell, Oracle or IBM, which will help, and the code will not close. And then, it is unlikely she will surpass the popularity, at least HP / UX. But we will be filled up, that everything will be OK, and after some finish in the interface and programs, things will go up. We believe that the developers will repeat the Linux path, bringing it from the category of amateur axes to a truly desktop system that will peacefully coexist with Linux 3.18.64, FreeBSD 27.0beta and Mac OS XVI 16.2 Zebr. Wait and see. Good luck to her! I will wait for the final release of version 1.0. And lastly, a clipping from the Syllable contact book screenshot, to set the mood:
PS: Useful links to resources on Syllable:
• www.syllable.org - the official site of the project;
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable - wiki by Syllable.
Syllable was originally created as a friendly, Unix-like graphics system for use on home computers and small open source offices under the GNU GPL license. It looks like Linux, but it is a completely independent system with its own kernel, its own libraries and user interface. It uses an open modular and fairly stable core. The origins lead to the "extinct" AtheOS, published in March 2000. AtheOS was a promising project that included the concepts of AmigaOS and BeOS. Unfortunately, soon the development of AtheOS stopped, and then completely closed. However, there were people who were not indifferent to the fate of this promising operating system, and in 2002 a new OS was assembled from the AtheOS source codes, continuing the AtheOS tradition - Syllable. Syllable is 99% (and maybe already 100%) compatible with POSIX standards and has many built-in applications that perform various functions inherent to a desktop computer, such as browsing the Web (browser ABrowse), working with mail (Whisper email client ), multimedia playback (ColdFish and Media Player players) and so on. The founder is considered to be Christian Van der Vliet (Kristian Van Der Vliet), better known as Vanders. Now on the development of actively working with a dozen people, including:
Arno Klenke is a programmer for the Syllable project. Works on ABrowse, a desktop and many Syllable drivers;
Kai de Vos (Kaj de Vos) - developer of the Builder system (analogue of Ports from FreeBSD) in Syllable;
Henrik Isaksson (Henrik Isaksson) - the developer of the appserver-layer GUI in Syllable;
Rick Caudill - developer of desktop tools, as well as source code editors;
Brent P. Newhall (Brent P. Newhall) - Webmaster of the official site of Syllable;
Flemming H. Sorensen (Flemming H. Sorensen) - responsible for localization, LiveCD and developer of a number of applications for Syllable.
')
All of them are part of the team SPT (Syllable Project Team). The file system in Syllable inherited from AtheOS (AFS), is 64-bit and journaling, which is very good.
System startup
After seeing a few screenshots and having looked through various information on the official Russian site of the project ru.syllable.org/pages/index.html , I decided to take a closer look at this OS, find out what Syllable is and whether it is as good as the developers say. On the download set the Russian version. The image is a LiveCD version, which is very well suited for testing such systems, allowing you to run the operating system directly from disk without installing it. The image itself takes about 151MB and it made me happy, there was a hope that they stuffed a large pile of programs there. I will run the image through qemu with 256MB of RAM, which is more than enough:
$ qemu -m -localtime -cdrom Syllable-0.6.4-LiveCD-1.1-RU.iso -boot dFor this purpose, you can use other virtual machine emulators, such as Oracle VirtualBox (under Win32, Linux, MacOS), VirtualPC (Win32), VMWare (propiretary). But it would be better if you burn the image to disk and boot from it. System requirements are minimal - 233MHz processor, 64MB RAM and VESA video card. Just remember, it does not work with a USB keyboard! So let's go!
Loading
As soon as the download started, the good old GRUB appeared on the screen. It is the old version 0.97, not 2, which pleased me too. Its menu offers a choice of several boot options, for example, safe mode, VESA graphics mode, non-Hyper Threading mode support and a special mode for those who run Syllable via Virtual PC. I decided to use the default mode. Immediately begins the boot system. It passes very quickly, informing the user in detail about what is happening at the moment. In appearance - a blue sullen screen on which various debugging information quickly flashes. Not very nice and scary children, but informative and fast. As in Linux:
Although some kind of panic messages appeared during the download (something like Panic: flush_block_list () failed !! ), the system started up normally. Then, as I expected, a login screen appeared. It turned out to be pretty cute, with a selection of user icons (this means that the system is multi-user), a password entry line and a button to turn off / reboot. Correctly they say that the entrance hall is the face of the house :). The user here seems to be the only one available for login - root. The password is also root (this is logical):
Of course, I remember the commandment of the wise men not to sit under the root, but there is no other choice. When I started my account, Syllable cursed about network problems. It's okay, it should be. That's all OSes loaded. Very fast, 15 seconds! That's what it means to cleverly write startup scripts (or simply nothing to run). Before me was the desktop.
First impressions
The first impressions that arise when looking at the desktop, so it is that somewhere I have already seen it. Oh yeah, this theme of icons I have on my GNOME'e - Tango is called.
A big plus of this system, in my opinion, is the unity of the desktop and OS, but a terminal is also available. It’s like in Macintosh or Windows, thanks to which applications always look the same “vtemu”, a minimum of dependencies and high speed of application execution. On the desktop, the developers placed 7 icons, including a terminal, a basket, a link to the home directory, the “Disks” directory (this is “My Computer” type), as well as a non-working reference to an html document. At the top there is a dock with a button-logo - the letter S is of a blue color in the orange circle, near this logo, icons of running programs appear (By the way, I want to say that applications are minimized to the taskbar as in Windows 7 - just an icon without signatures is shown. you can not say - the year 2007). This is the main menu from which programs and settings are launched, as well as the logout button. The context menu, in my opinion, is poorer than ever - click on the desktop on the desktop, and in response we only create a folder. I do not understand why the developers did not put there, at least, to update the desktop and terribly enrages when they cut down this useful feature (as in the third gnome). The context menu of desktop elements will be better and richer: “Open with help ...”, “Information ...”, “Rename”, “Move to Trash”, “Delete ...”. Well, let's not dwell on this, we look further. The axis is quite well translated into Russian, which I was very surprised and pleased. Not ukrainian, і tse close. Out of habit, the first application launched by me on new and unknown axes is the console. Here the terminal is the familiar ATerm, which I use in Linux with vte. The first thing I enter there is the command 'uname -a', to which I get the answer:
$ uname -a
syllable syllable 4.0.6 i586 SyllableNow you can see that the system uses its own kernel and for which architecture it is compiled. Next, let's see what my name is: enter “whoami”. In response, I get that I am a root user. Other GNU commands are also available here, for example ls, pwd, cat, cd, ps aux, top, kill, mount, and so on. As a shell, use the old-kind and time-tested Bash, so the Unicsoids will be right at home here! Well, now let's climb on the system settings with a graphical interface. When you first access the S-menu, the program database is updated. This can be understood by the window with the progress bar. The programs are located in the “Other” item (strangely somehow), and the settings in the “Settings” item. There are enough settings there. Appearance, time, desktop, dock, fonts, keyboard, localization, account, multimedia, network, screen, users - all this and more can be customized in just a couple of clicks. Not bad! In all settings, convenient, and most importantly, understandable even for the uninitiated person menu. Straight for housewives of the XXI century: 3. It seems that with the ease of use, I completely agree with the developers. There are very nice wallpapers, I liked them and there were a lot of them. Glory to the artists! Well, since there are beautiful wallpapers, it would be a sin not to make a couple of beautiful themes. Yes, there is such a thing. I counted eight window decorations. They are not bad, but not great. I saw all of them somewhere - Amiga, NeXT, Windows 98 and some others. Nothing special. I wonder if it's possible to download themes for this OS somewhere? The good thing is the dock. It contains the S-menu, icons of open programs, as well as applet plug-ins. It’s great, but I don’t really like any applets myself. There are plenty of them in Syllable, and I think you can download more of them. All the settings can not be described, so understand them yourself, all the more it is easy, and I turn to another part of your story - the program!
Software
The main thing that boasts Syllable, so it is easy to install programs. All you need is to unpack the archive with the program in the / Application directory. Similar is in Mac OS X. Delete program - delete the folder. And most importantly, no trouble with dependencies and libraries! Well, what could be better ?? But this is only with native applications. Ported programs are recommended to be placed in / usr, and then registered with the pkgmanager -a [directory] command. You can remove a ported application using the pkgmanager -r [directory] command. Porting applications is relatively easy; Syllable itself uses the C / C ++ programming interface and the format of ELF executable files. Therefore, some open source applications have already been assembled, such as DosBox, PHP, QEmu and others. I will be very happy to see such programs as GIMP, OpenOffice and games - Nexuiz and Quake 3 Arena under Syllable in the near future. To compile applications from source codes, use time-tested gcc.
FileBrowser. Probably one of the most important indicators for user-friendliness of the system for a standard user, is a file manager. Unfortunately, I could find out its name only by going through the running processes, there are no About's in it. However, the name itself does not shine with originality - FileBrowser. At first glance, it is rather primitive, but in the process of working you understand that everything unnecessary has been thrown out of it, leaving only the most necessary: ​​the “Forward”, “Back”, “Up”, “Home” buttons and the change view button. There is nothing specific, all its functions are probably in all other file managers. But he is very fast and eats quite a bit of RAM - so he is lightweight. I am a fan of dual panel managers. I would rate it at 3+, and for use I would look for something more functional.
Abrowse Every self-respecting OS contains a web browser, and Syllable is no exception. Here it is called ABrowse. Well, I do not even know how to say it. It looks like a good one, and it supports tabs. But in fact, it turned out to be one of the most inconvenient browsers that I have seen and used. In the settings - only proxy, and the possibilities of tabs tend to zero. Present only, there is not even a file open button - the file name has to be entered in the address bar. Also in it you can not save pages, choose the encoding and more.
His reputation is saved only by using the KHTML engine, which successfully works in Konqueror and Safari, so there should not be any special problems with displaying pages. But he opened my website absolutely wrong - only the left menu (and even those with errors), and the rest of the frames are just a white background. Perhaps it does not comply with w3c standards, as it incorrectly displays pages with frames. And so it is relatively fast. On a five-point system, I appreciated by 2. Good people, for God's sake, rewrite this monster, this is still OpenSource! Or port some other, more comfortable, which has more settings and features, for example, FireFox or Epiphany!
AEdit. AEdit is a standard text editor. Here it turned out to be very good!
All the necessary functions - at hand, support tabs (albeit primitive), a pleasant and easy-to-use interface. I liked that search and replace does not appear in a separate dialog box, but from the bottom as a panel - it seemed to me very convenient, as in KWrite / Kate with KDE 4. It does not support syntax highlighting, which makes it a bit inconvenient for developers but I think he has a good future. Definitely much better than Notepad. I rated it at 4+ and would use it in practice. I wonder if it supports plugins?
Albert. Here is another application that pleased me - this is a calculator, Albert. A calculator is a necessary thing, you always need to calculate something. But not all and not always take it seriously. And here the developers did their best to create such a tool. At first glance, the most common calculator, but if you dig deeper, you realize that this is not the easiest tool for counting numbers. It contains the most necessary constants, there are about 15. There are many windows with a calculator - you can open several auxiliary windows. There is a paper scroll - the history of calculations (it is very convenient when I made a mistake and it is necessary to trace exactly where); the H-base allows you to convert numbers to different bases on the fly (even to Roman ones - I have never seen this before).
Summing up I will say that shaking thought that this axis will be something like Visopsys or the like. Ie nothing special. But it turned out much better. The system turned out to be simple and convenient, as well as very unassuming to the power of the computer. And while writing the last lines of this article, I still cannot understand why there is so little information about it, why so few people know about it? I feel sorry for those developers who work for the good of society, invest so much effort and money, and ... no one uses it anyway. It's a shame, because the system is good. I would take it on bail some IT mastodon like Novell, Oracle or IBM, which will help, and the code will not close. And then, it is unlikely she will surpass the popularity, at least HP / UX. But we will be filled up, that everything will be OK, and after some finish in the interface and programs, things will go up. We believe that the developers will repeat the Linux path, bringing it from the category of amateur axes to a truly desktop system that will peacefully coexist with Linux 3.18.64, FreeBSD 27.0beta and Mac OS XVI 16.2 Zebr. Wait and see. Good luck to her! I will wait for the final release of version 1.0. And lastly, a clipping from the Syllable contact book screenshot, to set the mood:
PS: Useful links to resources on Syllable:
• www.syllable.org - the official site of the project;
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable - wiki by Syllable.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/133792/
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