Syllable Desktop

Syllable ( English for " syllable ") is a lean and fast unixoides desktop operating system for x86 processors. It constitutes a development (cleavage ) of the operating system AtheOS, whose development was discontinued in 2001.

  • 5.1 ABrowse

History

Prehistory

AtheOS was almost single-handedly developed by Kurt Skauen and characterized by boot times of a few seconds and fast operating speed. With the demise of Be Incorporated, the manufacturer of BeOS, it was the late 90s experienced a significant influx of developers and other interested parties. It has been widely touted as a possible successor to the multimedia operating system.

However AtheOS inventor Kurt Skauen lost around 2001 for personal reasons, the desire on his project and presented the development an entirely. The inactivity Skauens, who wished not employees on the core of its operating system, and his almost complete silence meant that the interest largely waned.

In July 2002 AtheOS trailers and developer Kristian van der Vliet took a fork and started to develop the operating system under the new name.

On 15 July 2002, he published a first version, which he gave the name Syllable. The first release of Syllable got the version number 0.4.0.

Version History

Syllable Server

Apart from the actual Syllable operating system, also called Syllable Desktop, there is also a Syllable Server variant called the special is intended for use as a server operating system. This variant is based on a Linux kernel on which the well-known Syllable graphical interface running. Syllable Server was announced at SylCon 2007, the first version of Syllable Server with the version number 0.1 was released in October 2007. Currently has upgraded to version 0.4 from 8 June 2010.

Concepts

The graphical user interface is reminiscent in some ways to the operating system BeOS. However Skauen always emphasized that not BeOS, AmigaOS but his real role model. The kernel is based on the POSIX standard. It is a monolithic kernel, like Linux, but it is more modularized as the Linux kernel, so to start the system, a special boot loader ( GRUB) is used, which loads disk and file system drivers into memory. As default shell bash is used. With AFS, the AtheOS File System, Syllable has a modern, system modeled on the Be File System, 64 -bit journaling file system that is comparable to other modern file systems.

License

Syllable is free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL ) and is thus available in the source code.

Innovations compared to AtheOS

Compared with the previous version of Syllable AtheOS has many new features, including:

  • An ATAPI driver that allows access to CD- ROM drives and also enables disk accesses in UDMA mode (sub AtheOS were hard drives exclusively via the BIOS responded)
  • Direct support for many graphics cards
  • Support for USB mice and USB keyboards
  • SATA support (still in early stages )
  • A largely configurable desktop
  • Sound support through a media framework
  • Use of MIME types for file allocation to programs
  • Some already usable applications such as a mail client ( Whisper ) and IRC program
  • A Taskbar and a GNOME -like Start Menu
  • About half a dozen different window decorations
  • An automatic installation as well as the availability of a live CD

Software

Given the early stage of Syllable and the amount of software is still quite low. Thanks to the extensive POSIX compatibility but were quite a few programs, mostly ported to the console by Syllable. Examples include ImageMagick, POVRay, Emacs, Apache and Samba. On programs for software development in the GCC and NASM have been ported. With Side Syllable has an IDE, but also is still in an early stage of development.

ABrowse

Another part of Syllable is taken of any AtheOS and now based on Webkit browser ABrowse, which is under the GPL. ABrowse was first developed in the summer of 2001 by Kurt Skauen based on the KHTML component of KDE 2 for its operating system AtheOS. In December 2004, then gave Arno Klenke known ABrowse updated to the KHTML component from KDE 3 to have. After ABrowse was written for, published in July 2007 Syllable version 0.6.4 completely new, it is based on WebKit. ABrowse is currently next Links2 the only graphical web browser for Syllable.

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