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I thought the Syllable screenshot running a DOS emulator running 
my Atari 8-bit emulator running a Boing ball demo in the Amiga group 
here would be a giveaway :-)

Yeah, that's pretty obvious! I've been thinking about getting a PS3 
to run as a linux box (for fun mostly as I do most of my work on 
a XP PC). Personally I think there's potential in that marketplace 
for a solid OS. Any thoughts?

but I suspected there might be a problem as when I tried to download 
it it had an htm extension which I removed to save as an iso extension

Did you burn it as an ISO image, not as a data file?

yes as an iso...if you click the link it brings me to a web page 
with jibberish on the screen as if its displaying binary data so 
I saved and changed the name removing the htm.

That most probably doesn't yield a proper CD ISO. It says to rightclick

James, we've been entertaining the thought of porting to PS3, but 
it would be a lot of work. Realistically, we can only do it with 
Syllable Server, our Linux, but that is not complete enough yet to 
be meaningful on PS3

If you download the top link, you should be launched into a BitTorrent 
client if you have one installed

That's the one. But it's a .bz2 file, compressed with BZip2

But the link to our current main English live CD is a referal, because 
it was the first on our new storage. The others are less problematic

This year we made a big split. I created a Linux distro based on 
my build system for Syllable. We call it Syllable Server, and Syllable 
proper is now called Syllable Desktop

So we won't have as much video support as X11, but we will have a 
relatively lightweight driver system to build our own stuff on

It should definitely suffice for a server

It's rather unknown, but used quite a bit in embedded systems

There were a few ancient Linux distros using it, but we will bring 
it to the desktop/server again

a shame it was cancelled

Yes, a law of computing, it seems. Any interesting graphics system 
will be shot down

I mean, on the server I just need a text interface and no GUI frills. 
Just lean and mean machine.

We've been doing that for the past half decade, and we have not achieved 
a breakthrough yet

Syllable Desktop doesn't have a text-only mode. It's really a desktop 
system, and Linux is really a server system

It has improvements all over. One of them is a new ORCA version

If you want to know more about it, I wrote a new introduction document:

Karl is making fixes and small enhancements every once in a while, 
and I am making package releases

But have a look here:

So now their sales pitch is: here is a unique machine with unique 
software that is good for your kids. It's open source, so it's superior. 
It's just that it's very slow, so you can also choose to boot it 
in this Windows thing. The special kid's environment and all the 
special driver software isn't there, but at least it isn't slow as 
molasses. Oh, we doubled the price of the machine, and to run this 
Windows thing you also have to buy and install this extra memory 
upgrade

One minor comment on the Syllable about page ... the content is fine 
but the page is "too busy". Perhaps moving the "Syllable for ..." 
inline content off on a separate page (or pages) might be a good 
idea. Also need to regroup the bullet points ... it's generally a 
bad idea to have a heading followed by more than about 7 bullet points 
(your first set has 21, so splitting the Desktop and Server points 
into sub-categories should improve things).

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. It's a work in progress. Indeed I'm 
having trouble making it as accessible as possible, because it's 
quite a lot of information

I've looked into their Linux distro. They stripped it down a lot, 
but otherwise it's fairly standard

It shouldn't be a big problem to get Syllable Server on it. Use their 
kernel configuration and add their drivers for their special hardware

Since it's basically a PC, Syllable Desktop should run as well, but 
it's fiddly to get it on it

I released a development build of Syllable Server:

This version of Cheyenne still has a small bug with the new REBOL 
2, though. See the Cheyenne group here

REBOL/Services is included, although the public version is a bit 
behind on RT's development version

Way to go Kaj;  Cool news.  Go Syllable Go.  Umm, if you are headed 
down this route; checkout TRETBASE too.  Mmm; it's a REBOL tasty 
DB.

Thanks. Been looking into a bit, but I don't see where I could use 
it yet

So it would probably end up as a separate installation package for 
Syllable eventually

I'm working on the configurations for the new servers, and I got 
Cheyenne running on Syllable Server a while ago

As you can see on our site, we managed to install Syllable on an 
Asus Eee PC a while ago and are improving our support for that

On the other hand, the incentive to run Syllable is much greater 
for the netbooks, because the difference with other systems is much 
more noticable there. Although they're full PCs, they're basically 
still a new form factor, and they bode well for our future

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.

This represents nine months of work, so a lot happened. I'll post 
the change log here:

This release focuses on making the system usable for running a number 
of standard servers, and several innovative REBOL servers.


The development files of the system, program headers, static libraries 
and development documentation, were moved to a separate area in /system/development/ 
and are now shipped in a separate package. If you want to compile 
software on Syllable Server, you need to install and register this 
package. The development files need to match the system: you can't 
use a package of any other Syllable version. (You will also need 
to install the Developer's Delight package collection and possibly 
other packages.)


User directories were moved from /home/ to /users/. Resource packages 
are in the process of moving from /usr/ to /resources/. /resources/ 
is currently a symbolic link to /usr/ so that resource packages will 
work from both places during the migration.


Many fixes were made, including more fixes for the CUPS print server 
and GhostScript. Creation of extra user accounts is possible now.


Many packages were updated, including the Linux kernel, IPTables, 
the GCC libraries, OpenSSH, SDL and QEmu. DirectFB was not upgraded 
due to incompatibility with Links2.


CDRTools were included for burning CDs, and the NetCat networking 
tool and the Transmission BitTorrent client were added.


In addition to the Syllable-specific early initialisation scripts 
(in the early-init subdirectory of packages), the late initialisation 
scripts (in the init subdirectory of packages) are now also executed. 
Several more initialisation scripts from Linux From Scratch were 
also added. Some servers can be started with the LFS scripts, others 
with the Syllable scripts (this will be unified in later releases).


The OpenSSH server was configured and now runs by default. At the 
first system start, security keys are generated that identify the 
server.


A collection of well-known root certificates from Certification Authorities 
was added to allow OpenSSL-based programs (such as OpenSSH) to establish 
the identity of destination points for network connections.


A MIME-types database was added in /etc/mime.types that is used by 
many programs, such as web servers, to identify the MIME types of 
files based on their file name extensions.

Several REBOL software stacks were added:

- The REBOL/Services Service Oriented Architecture.

- The UniServe network server framework.
- The Cheyenne Apache-class web server.
- A CAPTCHA library.
- A MySQL network protocol.

- The QuarterMaster web programming framework, based on a Model-View-Controller 
architecture. By default, it's configured to run on Cheyenne.


- The TINY library for parsing text, abstracting data access and 
building templates of generic text formats (including HTML). This 
library is an original creation and targets both ORCA and REBOL.


Configurations, including initialisation scripts, were added for 
the OpenSSH remote access server, the CUPS print server, the BIND 
domain name server, the Apache web server, the RSync file synchronisation 
server, the SaMBa Windows-compatible file server, the INetUtils FTP 
server and the VSFTP FTP server. Several of these are not included 
in the system, but need to be installed separately (the system is 
prepared for them). The sshd, cupsd and initd servers are started 
by default.


S3Cmd/S3Sync was included, a tool for accessing the Amazon Simple 
Storage Service (S3) and synchronising files with it.


As a demo, the Genode operating system framework, its Nitpicker windowing 
server (built on SDL) and its demonstration programs were included.

0.1 was the first working version, 0.2 was a restructuring an bug 
fixing. I decided it was no use making another release until it was 
usable for practical purposes. This is what it took

Further, a lot of nonsense happened and I had to spend a lot of time 
on other things, such as creating alternatives for disappearing websites

I'm running a vm of fedora just to run this bbs script!

Ah. A Syllable Server VM would be much more lightweight. That's one 
of the things I designed it for

you don't have money you don't have an internet serveur you have 
a digital watch  -> lets go  !!!

The documentation points to a disappeared site

I ran it for a few years to try it

Server's footprint is 370 MB. I'm also going to produce a trimmed 
version, but that will take a while longer

anything smaller than what I have is good, and a virtual disk that 
can grow

I have to create it at a certain size. The one I have now is 10 GB, 
I believe. Is that enough?

to make sure the mouse, and clock work and the video too I think 
.. though that's not so necessary in a non-gui environment

At least, not in the normal environment. DirectFB and SDL are included, 
but it's basically a console system

I suppose you have the VMware tools? Can you install them on a console 
VM?

yes .. it's all console installation ( compile .. but of course it's 
a perl script! )

Ugh. No Perl on a standard Syllable Server, so you'd have to install 
that, too

OK. It may actually be easier for me to produce a highly optimised 
RebelBB appliance :-)

I hear that Syllable Desktop can run for a week on VMware without 
loosing time, so I don't know what the problem with Fedora is

Were you running a desktop on the guest machine?

Hm. A Syllable colleague says loosing time is basically through a 
heavily loaded machine

It's a software clock once running, so these things are usually due 
to badly behaved programs disabling interrupts for short whiles

A few vms

A lot on it?

just a few rebol servers

#!/sbin/rebol  -qw
Rebol [
 file: %update.r

 purpose: {Update the system clock based upon the nist.gov time server}
 author: {Graham Chiu}
 date: 15-Apr-2007
]

get-nist-correction: func [/local nist-time cpu-time mjd hms] [
 nist-time: read daytime://time-a.nist.gov
 cpu-time: now

 parse/all nist-time [skip copy mjd 5 skip 2 thru " " copy hms 8 skip]
 nist-time: 17/Nov/1858 + to integer! mjd
 nist-time/time: to time! hms
 nist-correction: difference nist-time cpu-time
]

forever [
 if error? set/any 'err try [
 print [ "Current time was: " now ]
 current-time: now + get-nist-correction
 print [ "New time is: " current-time ]

 s: rejoin [ "date -s " {"} current-time/month "/" current-time/day 
 "/" current-time/year " " current-time/time {"} ]
 probe s
 call s 
 ][ probe mold disarm err ]
 wait 00:02:00 ;; wait 2 mins
]

the other way is just setup a time server on the host os and use 
the daylight protocol

not very big.  It's just a mail folder

I use it as a knowledgebase

Could replace the whole RebelBB/Dovecot thing with a REBOL script 
in an evening :-)

I actually stripped out all the html and compress the data which 
is then downloaded by a rebol client

then I would have to write a bbs ( again again again ) in Rebol!

Well, if you call a table of hundred lines a BBS :-)

Is it even updated through a web interface, or just through the REBOL 
client?

Odd. Doesn't sound like a problem to combine it?

Does your REBOL client just download a file?

Did the first build run of a stripped Syllable Server last night. 
Worked right away. Stripping out things such as printing and scanning 
reduced the footprint from 370 MB to under 250

what is scanning doing in a server build?

I'm sure someone could think up a scanning server. :-) Document archiving 
or in an embedded device or so

REBOL/Core is 700 KB and that includes rebbase and a bit of documentation

so, do you have a ruby script that backs up the server data to S3?

Yeah, it's the standard S3Sync tool that's included. Read the Server 
manual for an example of backing up a directory

So how close are you for a full Rebol clone?

I don't think it's ever going to be a full clone, because REBOL keeps 
developing

A server appliance ready yet?

No, I'm out visiting several conferences to promote Syllable Server. 
Giving a talk on Saturday

Around 500 at a rough estimate so far

Much less than for Desktop, but not too shabby for a console server 
without an installer

But never had a problem

so %prn is a DOS/win32 thing that REBOL just uses?

it's a confusing subject, because there are 20 different ways to 
print :-)

the problem is that the new printer is not a postscript printer.

now with a new printer, I have to create a completely different setup 
with ghostscript.

well, the bitmap it sends is over 2 MB in size. that's pretty huge 
for a pure b/w bitmap I think.

mine and budget. we can't afford a better printer.

you need to create a PCL driver :)

so it will always be slower than a PS printe.

and then you can dump the resulting prn file to the printer vs creating 
a bitmap??

the product description says that the HHP 1505 is a host based PCL 
printer

If it doesn't understand it .. then it's just a dumb printer