Syllable – My First Look

Yesterday, my mailbox contained a package that I was eagerly awaiting – Syllable v0.6.0a. Syllable is an open source Operating System that has been around for some time, but is now steadily picking up steam. I like it because it has the simplicity, polish and a lot of the functionality of the now defunct BeOS. I have been wanting to check it out for some time now, but have been too lazy to setup a dedicated box for it. Since it does not play nice with Virtual PC (my preferred desktop virtualization app) it was either setup a box or install VMWare. I chose the latter. My first impression of VMWare was not very favorable, but that’s a topic for another post. To save some time, I downloaded one of the many pre-installed Syllable VMWare machines and gave it a go first, before installing it off the CD.

Even though I had read about how fast Syllable is, I was not prepared for what I experienced. From the time I started the virtual machine to the time I was staring at a login prompt, the elapsed time was 8 seconds. The complete desktop was rendered 2 seconds after I logged in.

I tried the web browser ABrowse and was pleasantly surprised that it worked right away. I was able to surf the web and connect to a number of sites. There are compatibility issues, likely because the product is not yet finished, but the performance was pretty decent.

I also tried changing the appearance and playing with the various preference apps. All seemed to work, some better than others.

I ran out of time and could not continue to test Syllable, but will report back occasionally as and when I have a chance to experiment more with it. For now, my conclusion is that this is a fantastic OS. It has a way to go before it is ready for prime time, but it looks very promising. This is one to watch.