World: r3wp

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.

i tryed syllable in a VM box  that's cool ...so actually there is 
 2 derivated from BeOS syllable desktop and Aiku. I would say Syllable 
is a step further than aiku. One question this OS seems to be  pretty 
accurated for small environement. Do you plan to relase a netbook 
adapted syllable ? something like an ubuntu remix but adapted for 
syllable.

Syllable is already quite suited for netbooks, except that Syllable 
Desktop unfortunately still lacks some of the hardware support for 
some popular netbooks

What would you want to change for a netbook?

I've been watching TinyCore, but it's so minimal that I don't have 
a use for it

It's more like a geek exercise in how far you can strip down a Linux 
distro

We have Syllable Desktop to boot in seven seconds, but even there 
the footprint is an order of magnitude larger because we want a functional 
system

can Syllable run on eeepc netbooks or are there some problems with 
drivers?

There are a few issues and limitations, different ones for Syllable 
Desktop and Syllable Server, but basically they work on EeePC

I have an EeePC 901 that has been overused to the point of no longer 
working, so it is due for a redo and possible repurposing. Might 
Syllable be appropriate for such a machine? What hardware is unsupported, 
and how much space is taken by the OS?

Syllable doesn't support wireless AFAIK ...

Darn, that rules it out for me.

Yes, I used to use wireless through a game console like adapter that 
appears like normal ethernet

There are a few more gotchas on EeePC. They're fairly difficult machines. 
Acer One works better

Our USB 2 driver is buggy, but the USB 1 driver works on EeePC

Worse, this is one of those that has the two flash drives instead 
of one hard drive or flash drive.

I don't remember exactly, but it may be that the full widescreen 
video size is not supported

Two flash drives? Never read about that

Primary is 4GB, the other 8GB. Linux wasn't offered as an option 
on this one without changing the primary to 8GB.

Syllable Desktop takes about 250 MB disk space:

http://web.syllable.org/pages/about.html#Desktop

I have physically dropped this computer while it was running a few 
times without it even noticing.

Yep, they're sturdy

On a regular EeePC, there's an SSD disk and an extra card slot, which 
are swapped by the BIOS during booting

I think that this is what mine is like.

I may have to just do a system restore and then redo my customizations 
and app removals, still stuck with XP. Annoying and slow, but this 
provides the greatest support and flexibility on this platform. I 
need my 802.11n and (for now) Hamachi.

Maybe the second SSD is on that second slot. In any case, this leads 
to weird drive swapping in the boot manager. The Syllable development 
build has a special installation entry that does that and disables 
USB 2, but there are some other omissions on the development build

Has anyone tried to get Remobo or NeoRouter working on Syllable? 
The Linux ports might work...

Never heard of those

They are virtual LAN projects. Like a full LAN instead of just a 
point-to-point connection. Like Hamachi.

I have many computers that I network together. All of these are using 
dynamic addresses, and most of them change physical locations often. 
Hamachi makes all of that go away - they seem like they're on the 
same switch with fixed IPs.

Remobo is closed source, so it couldn't be ported

Ah, Hamachi is LogMein. They're advertising on our sites all the 
time :-)

Hamachi only supports Windows well. Before they were bought by LogMeIn 
they were working on Mac and Linux versions, but not since then, 
and the old alphas use a different network protocol than modern Hamachi. 
This is why I've been looking for a decent replacement, but it is 
tough since there are no open-source equivalent projects.

Well, these projects sound like the OLPC software

Not really, since this provides an overlay network that gets past 
NAT and dynamic IPs. OpenVPN provides point-to-point or client-server 
networks, but not a full LAN.

The best seems to be NeoRouter, but I would need a stable always-on 
server with a reliable internet connection, and I don't have either, 
particularly not the reliable internet. NeoRouter gives you more 
flexibility (in theory), but requires you to provide your own login 
server instead of just using one from the provider like Hamachi.

NeoRouter could probably run on Syllable Server though, as it is 
a CLI app.

Yes. They'd have to port it to Syllable Desktop themselves, though, 
because it's also closed

I find it interesting that people could have had this ten years ago 
with Groove

I checked. Though in theory it would be possible to make something 
like NeoRouter in open source, the no-cost closed source products 
have taken all of the community will away. There are no decent open 
source projects that are even close to the Hamachi model afaik.

There have long been all sorts of open source projects in this direction, 
but they're very nerdy

I checked at least a dozen different projects, and none have come 
close to the same model. For that matter, Remobo and NeoRouter seem 
to be the only other closed-source products that come close.