World: r3wp

Similar to R2 itself, there's not much REBOL community left. It will 
be tough to restore trust

David, we had a nice conference. Everything was filmed, but it always 
takes the organiser a long time to edit the videos, so I don't know 
when they will be published

I'm not very familiar with the ROX Desktop. You mentioned earlier 
that you had X running on Syllable Server. Does that mean it will 
be possible to run REBOL/View on Syllable Server?

Yes, typing into it right now (AltME) :-)

I demoed AltME on the conference and my CMS running in View, generating 
web exports of AltME

Cool!

That was one of my major motivations for producing an extra Linux 
system

Is the development version available for download? I just checked 
the website and only see a development release for 0.4

Not publicly, as it doesn't have release quality yet, but you can 
contact me privately here

OK.. My project requirements changed last week. For the project I 
mentioned earlier, I was going to have an embedded Linux server and 
then use throw-away Dell machines running Windows for REBOL/View 
nodes. Now the customer wants all embedded Linux with touch screens. 
I'm currently developing on Syllable Server and have to look at another 
distro to run X. I'm wondering out loud how stable your development 
release is for running nothing but a single REBOL/View application. 
It's for a material handling application in a manufacturing environment.

Ah, the joy of changing IT requirements :-)

It works quite well as long as you don't try to install extra software

As I told before, I'm installing X and other stuff from GoboLInux 
packages, and ROX from ZeroInstall packages. The packages that I 
include in the distro are configured and somewhat tested. Not all 
functionality works, but they're fairly alright

Only when you try to install more software you're on your own, because 
there are often more missing configurations, or conflicts between 
binary packages

The most annoying thing about the default configuration is that drag 
and drop works between some apps, but not others. Then it crashes 
the desktop. ROX will detect that and nicely restart, but you can't 
call it stable

Further, I'm running under the root account, because X needs to be 
started as root. Switching to another account after that requires 
a login manager, but I haven't integrated one yet

So there's no system security at the moment. On the other hand, if 
the goal is an appliance running one application, it can be very 
nice to leave out parts of the desktop to make it run just that one 
app

All my development is directed towards this: running Syllable on 
both clients and servers, with REBOL on top, nicely integrated

I've been working towards getting Pacman packages working, from ArchLinux, 
to see if that works better for the moment being. That's the next 
development goal

Kai, is there a specific design reason that you prefer ReiserFS over 
Ext3 for Syllable Server?

Yes, ReiserFS is designed as the storage layer for a database system. 
In particular, it was designed and optimised to be very good at large 
numbers of small files, assuming they will be records in a database. 
This is exactly what we tend to do in native REBOL databases

Unfortunately, Hans Reiser has gotten himself life in jail, so the 
higher level database is unlikely to ever be created. But it's still 
good as a file system

No computers in jail?

It's not very pretty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

hehehe.. I was just there... yeah... grim.

this is a more colourful history http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Hans_Reiser

Kaj: yes that is exactly why I was looking at ReiserFS too. Why build 
storage systems on top of FileSystems if FileSystem could be the 
storage system (and probably more optiomal if it'

Exactly. He got some things right...

ddharing - my friend works for Pickering. Not much of a know company 
here in CZ, but rather important development/production company for 
special hw (they now e.g. got some contract by Agilent). He built 
their production facility around really old terminals (300 MHz Genode 
based Compaq T2/ a 5USD) they bought on e-bay or so. Those terminals 
have something like 24MB of RAM, so no chance of browser running 
there. They use REBOL/View system there. As there is little of RAM/storage, 
he redirected swap file to the server :-)

Are they running Windows 95 or something?

Pekr, interesting story. That's really minimal hardware. What kind 
of REBOL/View application was it?

Probably run windows CE

They run Linux of-course. Could you see Windows 95 with remote swap 
file? Maybe so, but I never tried that :-) They use them as production 
line terminals - various stages of production, recording info, storing 
into mySQL. The app was initially simple, now it is not simple anymore 
:-) I always said my friend is crazy. I suggested python, perl, etc. 
to him, to be more safe, but he did like REBOL, its size, just-on-file 
aspect, and now the system might be rolled to UK based facility :-)

why use other languages?  My personnal observation is that software 
running REBOL is much more stable than other scripted languages. 
 cause you have more time to debug and less bugs to begin with.

Must be a very old or overloaded Linux then, to run View on 24 MB

Syllable Desktop has the first article of a series of I think two 
in PCLinuxOS magazine:

http://pclosmag.com

Especially for Graham, it has a screenshot tour of installing the 
operating system ;-)

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201009/page09.html

Kaj, do you have a favorite Live CD Linux that you use to install 
Syllable Server. I've been using Puppy Linux, but it doesn't have 
XZ-Utils or Reiser filesystem support in the default distribution.

I use TinyME, but it currently doesn't have a download, and the previous 
stable release of Wolvix, but it currently doesn't have a stable 
release and the new versions are much bigger

Older distros are unlikely to have XZ-Utils, so I have an extra BZ2 
version of the Syllable Server distro. Advantage if you're the distro 
author :-)

I'm eying ArchBang and the TinyME development releases to try out, 
but I don't know yet if they're suitable

SliTaz is also good, but in any case a year ago it didn't have ReiserFS

Anyway, a year ago I decided to stop distro hopping if at all possible, 
and try to develop Syllable Server so that I could work on it myself 
on all my machines; which I've now succeeded at apart from that installation 
CD

So that's one of the next targets to replace

Have you ever evaluated TinyCore Linux? It's from the former developer 
of DSL (Damn Small Linux). On a modest Atom, it boots to a minimal 
desktop in about 7 seconds. Of course, it has almost nothing by default. 
The first thing you have to do is download packages of stuff you 
need.

The footprint is 10 megs. Without X, it's only 6 megs. They call 
that one MicroCore.

http://tinycorelinux.com

I was looking at that one to build up just what's needed to install 
Syllable Server.