From Kristian Van Der Vliet, project leader of Syllable: “We are currently checking everything into CVS in preperation for Syllable 0.4.4, which is now scheduled to be released next weekend.”
” (Release: 31st May/1st June) The features in Syllable 0.4.4 will include:
Drivers
* ATA/ATAPI driver
* ISO-9660 filesystem driver
* SiS 3xx Video Driver
* Via VT82xx Audio Driver
* Soundblaster Audigy/Live! Audio Driver
Appserver
* Support for dead keys added to appserver and TextView class
* Support for shearing/rotation of fonts
* Ability to turn on/off antialiasing
* Video Overlays (An MPlayer 0.9.0 package shall be available)
Syllable 0.4.4 will be distributed as a bootable CD image.
The downloadable CD image will include a bootable Syllable installation
system, the Syllable 0.4.4 base tarball, bootable disk images, documentation and the Syllable-Net packages (ABrowse, Whisper and Chat). Everything else (Extra packages, source etc.) can be downloaded from http://syllable.sourceforge.net as usual.
I will also be selling Syllable CD’s. They will be the same as the
downloadable image, but will also include the upgrade tarball, all of the
available packages and a full CVS snapshot. If you cannot download all of Syllable, or if you want to support development, then CD’s will be available for 5 UKP (7.5 USD, 7 EUR)
I can accept cash in UKP, USD or EUR. If there is enough demand then I shall setup a PayPal account to allow CC/Debit/PayPal payments, too.
If you wish, you can pre-order a CD now by emailing me your name, address and how many CD’s you would like (Oh O.K, I’m being hopeful here!) to [email protected] Once 0.4.4 is available I shall put my address on http://syllable.sourceforge.net to allow you to make payment.
I would like to say a big thankyou to everyone who has helped with the
development of Syllable and 0.4.4. In particular I would like to thank Arno for his drivers and patches to the ATA driver, and Ville for his work in porting the ISO-9660 filesystem, and also being a very fast and dedicated debuger over the past few weeks! As always, Henrik, Rick, Shawn and Pablo also all deserve thanks for their continued work and support. Thanks guys!
—
Vanders
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/
http://www.liqwyd.com”
I really-really hope that the Matrox G400 is fixed in this version (the driver was broken in the previous versions)…
Anyone know what the creator of atheos is doing? He gave up a great os 😐
As it seems with most operating systems today, the new GFX cards is not supported… not Radeon9700 or GF4.
Anyway, kudos to Syllable team for staying alive!
Yeah, it really is a shame…The problem is that nvidia won’t give out the specs. I’ve heard even if you sign an NDA they still get REALLY tight with it.
I don’t think that open source drivers for any of those cards are going to happen soon.
“I don’t think that open source drivers for any of those cards are going to happen soon.”
Ehm, XFree has support for Geforce 4. Just no 3D acceleration as with every NVidia card.
I might actually try it now if it’s on a bootable CD. I tried to install it once(well AtheOS), but my tarball was corrupted, andI didn’t bother with it again.
No kidding. It makes it so much easier, especially for those running windows. Writing those images to floppies was a pain, not to mention the fact that my new notebook doesn’t have a floppy drive.
Just for the record: Syllable has support for GF4 (and has had it for a year or so). :o)
I must say that screen shot you see when you click on their screen shots link looks very very nice. And so do the other ones like it. You can go through the gallery and see someone has been improving the GUI heavily. If this is what it currently looks like I must say you guys have one of the most professional looks out there in alt OS world.
I always wondered how difficult it would be to write a wrapper that would allow you to use a Win32 graphic driver into a different OS. That would be the silver bullet since you’d get all of a sudden high-performance drivers for every hardware on earth, with 3D acceleration and all.
The concept could be extended to other type of hardware as well…
I thought about this a lot. I think it would be necessary to use Win98 drivers (since AFAIK they’re .VXDs). I think 2K/XP uses a non-separate-file based system, but I don’t know.
Anyone care to clarify?
Eugenia, I’m sorry to tell you that the Matrox driver is still not working properly. We’re still getting conflicting reports of it working/not working. Its not even clear if it is only G400 cards or if it is some G200 cards, too. If all goes well hopefully we’ll have it fixed for the next release.
GeForce 4 cards are supported by the nVidia driver. We have had reports of it not working on a GF 4 400 but working on the GF 4 420 and GF 4 440.
There has just been a post on the mailing list from Jan Hauffa informing us that he has hacked Bochs to support 24/32bit Vesa modes and that he has Syllable booting & running in Bochs now, too.
That doesn’t excuse the lack of Radeon drivers, or just plain 2D drivers.
“That doesn’t excuse the lack” ??????? Nobody needs to excuse for anything. You are free to help and code instead of complaining!
What are you on about?
Your Radeon should be VESA2 compatible, in which case it won’t have any problems with Syllable at all. It’s not like the Syllable GUI will require all the power of your prescious Radeon.
Pardon my sarcasm. I have criticasters. If you think there’s no excuse for not having the driver then why don’t you write it?
– Bram
Kurt originally said on his website that the Matrox driver had been tested to work fine with the G400. Someone else said it worked fine with their G400 too. Seemly everyone else strikes a major alignment problem that makes viewing painfully difficult. This makes me think only specific revisions of each card are affected. I remember reading that Matrox had done some real changes inbetween revisions for the G400 (something to do with Intel chipsets?), so perhaps specific parts are involved.
Anyway, if you’ve got a Matrox card that won’t work properly with Syllable, the tempory solution is to delete the Matrox driver file, then Syllable will automatically use VESA. Actually, Vanders, you may as well not have the Matrox driver as an option by default – pop it in a subdirectory of the video drivers dir, it’s just too much trouble when it doesn’t work as par normal.
Yeah, the G400 has been reported as working, yet when I tested it on a dual head G400 it doesn’t work! So its definitely a bug.
To be honest the code for the Matrox driver is all over the shop; what it needs a new port from a clean code base. I’m going to try to make the time to do this, but I’ve not attempted to port any X drivers before so I wouldn’t hold your breath if you have a Matrox card.
I will put the mga_generic driver someplace else in 0.4.4, thanks for the suggestion. Very few people are even capable of activly using it as it is.
I thought about this a lot. I think it would be necessary to use Win98 drivers (since AFAIK they’re .VXDs). I think 2K/XP uses a non-separate-file based system, but I don’t know.
Anyone care to clarify?
Some Win9x drivers use VXDs for various reasons, but very few use them primarily (softmodems might, and USB devices). Most drivers in Win9x and NT/2k/xp rely primarily on dll files (and other binary files). The main problem is implementing the infrastructure that the drivers expect to find when they are installed, at a low enough level that you don’t severely impact performance by using the drivers.