Syllable Desktop

Syllable Desktop is an open source, desktop-oriented OS derived from the AtheOS operating system and built around the GNOME graphical desktop environment. A server edition of Syllable Linux is also available for download on Softoware.

It’s distributed as a compressed 32-bit ISO image

The Desktop edition of Syllable is distributed as a compressed CD ISO image that has been designed to support only 32-bit applications, despite the fact that it runs on either of the 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (x86_64) hardware platforms.

While the 7z archive has only 100MB in size, the ISO image has approximately 350MB in size, which means that it must be written on a CD disc or a USB thumb drive of 512MB or higher capacity.

The boot menu offers a plethora of options, but there’s no live mode

The good news is that you can boot the operating system with default kernel parameters, without a USB/CD drive, on an ASUS EeePC netbook, from an AFS-formatted USB device, from a Ext2FS-formatted USB device, in safe mode or in a virtual machine from the boot menu.

The bad news is the there’s no live mode, which means that you’ll have to install the distribution on your computer in order to use it. From the boot menu you can also run a kernel debug operation or boot an existing OS from the main drive.

The installation process is quite complicated for new Linux/UNIX users

Unfortunately, Syllable Desktop is not a user-friendly operating system, as the installation process is quite complicated for new Linux/UNIX users. It runs mostly in text-mode, on a terminal emulator, requiring you to partition the disk, set up users and passwords, install a bootloader, etc.

Therefore, if you’re in a hurry and you want to download a Live CD with the GNOME desktop environment, we strongly suggest you to search on Softoware for a different distribution.