World: r3wp

Then again, I don't know of any elevator pitch that would appeal 
to you, Graham ;-)

Kaj, I've downloaded the syllable desktop 3x now ...  I think that's 
a pretty good response to your advertizing here.

Of course, it just happened to be the same VM 3x unchanged since 
way back ...

so I was no wiser...

Sure, but your question was about Syllable Server. Then again, there 
are probably tens of thousands of people who did manage to install 
Syllable Desktop

I think you said syllable server installation would be too hard for 
me .. I believed you!

see ... I'm quite amenable to elevator talk

To run syllable server, I personally need

1. ghostscript
2. hylaFAX
3. oracle or mysql
4. jira
5. pmwiki
6. apache
7. cheyenne

without my having to recompile anything ...

And maybe Vsphere one day

unless that uses its own os

Well, no, it's clear that Server is not that system, but then, there 
is no system that fills those requirements, so if you cling to them 
you will never be fulfilled

I run all of the above on Ubuntu server .. no probs

ie. those are the apps I currently run on Ubuntu server

oh .. and OpenSSH server

Sure, but they didn't come out of the box. So why is it difficult 
to accept the same for Syllable?

I didn't say out of the box .. I said without my having to recompile.

I just use apt-get and install

or aptitude

sorry .. and dropbox for backup

Well, I've been working on that all year. As I said before, we're 
not in Nirvana yet. The latest Server 0.4 was prepared to be a platform 
for third-party package managers. I've been running binaries from 
three other package managers in addition to our own, but this is 
a difficult topic, so they're not ready for release yet

You perceive me as difficult .. but I'm a windows guy forced to struggle 
along with linux :(

so I want as easy as possible

In the meantime, Server is its own system, usable for what is is

what it is

should call it Que Sera server :)

As I've tried to make clear, Syllable is targeted at people who want 
to use open source and Linux but in an easier way. But this is a 
huge and ambitious task, and we are as far as we are. If you want 
more, you have two options: helping or waiting

Ok, I'm just letting you know at which point I'd be interested ...

The thing about Ubuntu is .. not that it's any better or worse than 
anything else, but I can google a problem and always find an answer

OK. Anyway, if you have all your apps without problems on Ubuntu, 
I suppose there is no problem

Yep, I've got three ubuntu servers running 24/7

and I've setup ubuntu to run HylaFAX servers for a number of people 
too

Please note that David asked me for elevator pitches. In an elevator 
pitch, one usually sheds light on what a project can do, not what 
it cannot do

Server is among the leanest and easiest general-purpose Linux distros.

Also, we're not very interested in generically replacing other systems. 
Syllable's goal is to create new systems with their own personality 
and strengths

So, what exactly are people using it for if not one of the things 
I need?

Do you have case histories?

We're running it on our servers, desktops and laptops

as web server?

and ?

Yes. On our personal machines, we're doing development and office-type 
work. On our servers, we're running AltME and Cheyenne with supporting 
servers such as OpenSSH and FTP. We also have BitTorrents running 
to support Syllable downloads

sftp ?

That should work, as it's included in OpenSSH, but I haven't tried 
it yet. People are FTPing their websites to us from REBOL on Windows 
and Mac, so no SFTP there, and the data will be public, anyway

Kaj, I have looked closely at your website, but I wanted to see if 
I could get some additional insight from the man himself.

We're in the process of moving our REBOL-based ASCADA software from 
Windows to Linux. We already have a successful deployment at DHL 
using CentOS. I want to standardize on industrial PCs such as the 
Advantech UNO1170E running a lightweight Linux and our software. 
I'm evaluating Syllable Server even though it is only at 0.4 because 
it is console-based and REBOL friendly out of the box.

My Linux admin skills are not great . I spent several days of off-an-on 
attempts to get Syllable Server running. Now that I'm past the worst 
part of the learning curve, it's pretty easy. I just did another 
install on an Aspire One Netbook in about 15-20 minutes. I'm using 
Puppy LInux on a USB stick to partition and format the drive, run 
Grub and edit the text files.

I have a looming project with Glad where this can be deployed. I'll 
be doing some extended load testing next week to see how our services 
run and verify the server's stability. These days a lot of software 
gets used for years and never makes it to 1.0. I'm running REBOL 
scripts, sqlite and Cheyenne. We'll also be using another third-part 
y so library for PLC communications.


Kaj, do you feel confident in Syllable Server's present state to 
run this kind of workload. I'm just looking for a personal opinion, 
of course. The ultimate decision and responsibility is mine. From 
the customer's perspective, our product is an embedded system running 
a custom version of Linux.

Kaj, I see that you've included Oracle's BerkeleyDB, but not the 
less corporate sqlite. Was there a specific reason for that choice?

Yes, BerkeleyDB was one of the oldest and most popular open source 
databases before Oracle acquired it. Many open source packages require 
it. We would rather have kept it out of the base system, but one 
such package is in the Syllable Server base system; I believe IPRoute

We're using SQLite in our own Syllable Desktop web browser, though, 
so it's even ported to Desktop and it would be easy to use our build 
system to compile it on Server