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The current development build of Syllable Desktop has a greatly increased installation menu. The options for IDE and USB CD players were merged, so that the troubleshooting options can now also be tried with a USB CD player. Specific installation options were added for the Acer Aspire One and ASUS EeePC netbooks. The EeePC requires compensation for its shifting of drive positions, which is now performed by the installer. This was tested for us by Hans Rood on the Summer SylCon, and the Aspire One was tested for us by Ruud Kuin. There are now more safe mode options for troubleshooting, such as an option to fully remove the USB 2 driver, which is buggy on some systems.
Experimental installation options were added for installing from and to USB memory sticks. These don't work yet, because Syllable doesn't start from USB devices other than CD players yet, but this is being worked on. Apart from Syllable's own AFS format, there's an option for starting from USB memory formatted with Linux's Ext2FS file system. Installing to USB is still unreliable on Syllable, so the Ext2FS option allows to experiment with creating a USB installation medium from Linux.
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At a request from Carl Sassenrath, inventor of REBOL and the Amiga OS, Kaj has created a website that allows you to try the REBOL programming language without installing it. The site showcases the new REBOL version 3 that is close to going into beta release. It also offers to test the classic REBOL 2 and ORCA, the open source implementation of REBOL, and to make comparisons between them.
The website is running on Syllable Server 0.3, in development towards version 0.4. For this application, the security of the server operating system was enhanced to be able to offer the public to run generic REBOL scripts.
The website was made on top of the REBOL stack included in Syllable Server. It runs on the Cheyenne web server. It is made in a Model/View/Controller architecture with the network application platform we have been working on: a combination of the QuarterMaster web framework and the content management system that is also used to build our Syllable websites. This REBOL demo site marks the transition of this application platform to being capable of building advanced interactive websites.
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At the request of our Spanish web master, Lucas Murad from Argentina, and Leo Ruilova, from Chile, Kristian has opened a section for Spanish speaking Syllable fans on our forum. Do come in and say hello to them!
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Rui managed to port MEDNAFEN, an emulator of several classic game computers, including the Atari Lynx, Nintendo Game Boy, NES, Sega Master System and Neo Geo Pocket. Together with the other emulators that already run on Syllable, this brings us many classic games.
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Our yearly summer conference will be held from Saturday July 18 to Saturday July 25 in the Netherlands. We will be sailing again on the Frisian vessel the Stêd Sleat while discussing and demoing the Syllable systems. This year we are offering several arrangements, so you can choose how many days you want to attend. There are discounts for longer stays and for kids, so you can make this into a nice vacation for your family. Contact Bas for arrangements.
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The news sections of the websites have been extended with RSS feeds. If you prefer to follow Syllable news through an RSS reader application, you can now do so. Each selection of the news on the different sites has a corresponding feed. Look for the RSS icons. Please don't let your reader fetch the feeds too often. We don't publish news several times per day, so it's no use to check more often than a few times each day. Each news article now also has its own page, so the feeds can point to them. Good reading!
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Anthony has implemented keyboard navigation in DiskManager. This means you will be able to install Syllable without using a mouse, in case the installation CD has problems with that. To do this, Anthony had to make fixes to keyboard handling in LibSyllable Views. This will also improve keyboard use in other applications.
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Anthony has enlightened us by implementing auto-login. In the next Syllable Desktop development build, you will be able to go into the Users & Groups preferences and set a user account to log in automatically, without going through the password dialog.
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A sigh of relief goes through the audience as we give you the new Syllable Desktop. Thanks go to those who contributed to it and those who helped shake out the last remaining bugs. Many of those were fixed, including several regressions from earlier releases. The window decorators don't destabilise the system anymore. The installation procedure is greatly enhanced with options to fix hardware support problems. The native web browser is replaced with Webster, based on a newer version of the WebKit engine. Many enhancements were made to standards support, leading, among others, to the ability to run QEmu - so now you can run virtual machines. The documentation was improved and several translations were added. Read more in the full release notes. ISO CD images, (VMware) emulator images, an upgrade pack and documentation are available from the download page. Extra software is available here.
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There's a release candidate for Syllable Desktop 0.6.6 in our development builds now. If you want to influence the final version, this is your last chance to test it.
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If you think the news articles here are out of line, that's because the websites got a brandnew news module. Custom-made for Syllable, just as the rest of the site. However, the older news items are still in the old style, which is less flexible, so we can't easily update their styling. The new articles are in our custom database and have their content fully decoupled from the styling. They're also easier to write and maintain. It's an important focus of ours to lighten our workload.
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Kaj has ported XML-Starlet,
a suite of XML tools that builds on LibXML2 and LibXSLT. The immediate
motivation for the port was the need to process the XML files inside
Open Document Format files (as used by OpenOffice and a number of other
office applications). In our downloads is an installation
package for Syllable Desktop.
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The current issue of Micro
Mart,
a weekly computer magazine in the UK, has an article about Syllable and
three other alternative operating systems. It was written by Michael
Reed.
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![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Happy
new year to all! I think we can look forward to it, because there is a
lot of opportunity for it to be better than the last one. :-) | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | We
have a new Russian translator. Alexander ("azlk" on the forum) has
already done a lot of work on our Russian website, and is also working
on the translation of Syllable
itself. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | The Dutch website of Software
Freedom Day
is now running on Syllable Server and the included Cheyenne web server.
This has given the site much more storage space for their multimedia
content, virtual hosting under their own domain names and the freedom
to use server technologies of choice. The site was already made with
the same content management system that Kaj is developing for the
Syllable sites. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Bas picked up the new Dutch
Linux Magazine this morning, that has hit the shops now. This
November issue, number 5 of this year, has a four-page article on
Syllable, including an interview Kristian did with them. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Bas has
announced that he will organise the first winter edition of
the Syllable Conference. We set up its
own page for it, where Bas will keep you posted as the event
evolves. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Dmitry ("Rohan" on the forum) has requested an
official Russian website, so we set it up. Dmitry will be translating
it over time. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Kaj
will be presenting the brand new Syllable Server 0.3 at the Software
Freedom Day event coming Saturday, September 20, in the city
of Utrecht
in the Netherlands. He will also be present at the Holland Open
Software Conference in Amsterdam the two days before.
Although there
won't be a Syllable presentation there, if you'd like to speak with Kaj
you can catch him while walking around, or enquire with Bas at the
Software Freedom Day booth at HOSC. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Thanks to the fact that Syllable Server is a
Linux, and after having gone through their waiting
list, Syllable is now listed
on DistroWatch,
the major monitoring site of Linux distributions and a few BSD and
Solaris systems. | |
![[Syllable]](../images/64x64/Syllable-emblem-63x64.gif) | The
third release of Syllable
Server has been published. This is an important release, because it is
the first one that focused on making the system actually usable as a
server. A number of popular servers were added and configured, and also
several innovative REBOL software stacks. Out of the imaginary box,
Syllable Server is now ready for such things as accepting remote SSH
log-ins over the network, running a web server on the Cheyenne REBOL
server, running an FTP server and several more. Special attention has
been paid to programmability, with support for developing
Model-View-Controller web applications in QuarterMaster
and networking
applications with the REBOL/Services
Service Oriented Architecture. The
Genode Nitpicker
windowing system is also included. Read the rest in the full changelog. An extensive
manual was also written, which is easy to follow. As usual,
both a BitTorrent
download
(preferred) and a regular
download are available (80 MB 7-Zip archive). Please use the
torrent if you
can.
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![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Apart
from organising Syllable events, Bas is very active in circles of open
source, open standards and open content in general. A truly open guy.
:-) He also organises Software Freedom Day in the Netherlands. His
free event will take place next weekend on September the 13th.
It's well worth attending, with around twenty organisations setting up
booths and holding talks. In addition, Bas will be demonstrating
Syllable and the upcoming new Syllable Server release. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Bas will be representing Syllable at the T-DOSE conference in
the Netherlands,
the free Technical Dutch Open Source Event, "The place where experts
meet". In the weekend of October 25 and 26, in the city of Eindhoven,
at the Fontys University of Applied Science, there will be more than
twenty speakers and many open source projects will shed light on their
workings. Bas will present Syllable in a talk and man a booth. | |
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Syllable
is a volunteer project that creates a family of easy to use, free
software operating systems. You can use them separately, or you can use
them together to form network platforms. Read our full introduction and go to the Syllable Desktop and
Syllable Server
sites for more information, news and software downloads. 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. It is designed and optimised for your desktop PC,
making it exceptionally fast and responsive and easy to use. It is
under development, so it is interesting and even exciting
to try out, but you
have to decide for yourself whether it fits your needs already.
Syllable Desktop runs on industry-standard Personal Computers with a
minimum of a Pentium compatible processor and 32 MB of
memory. It can make a new computer extremely fast and an old computer
usable again. More
specificationsSyllable
Desktop site 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. It is optimised for server computers, yet inherits a
lot of efficiency and speed from the Syllable Desktop design. The
current version only has a text mode console interface suitable for
server use and elementary support for running some graphical programs
(it is shown here running on Syllable Desktop under emulation).
Nonetheless, the clean Syllable design and straightforward
documentation make it easy to use. The graphical user
interface from
Syllable Desktop will be added in later versions to enhance ease of use
further. Due to its Linux base, Syllable Server is a stable
and usable system. It runs
on industry-standard Personal Computers with a minimum of a 486
processor and 16 MB of memory. It can make a new
computer very fast and efficient and an old computer usable again. More specificationsSyllable Server site
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