Syllable 0.6.1
I ran the Syllable livecd in qemu (no acceleration). It's a bit sluggish (maybe because I'm running it without acceleration in qemu on a pentium M throttled to 600 MHz 
) and it crashed once, but it certainly seems like a nice OS. It uses it's own GUI instead of X, so it's not a terribly useful system because of lack of apps, but that can change in the future, if someone ports gtk and the like to Syllable. If you just want to email, chat with jabber, surf the web, listen to music, etc etc, then it already is a good OS for you.
Double click timing is awkward, and the "terminal" desktop icon doesn't do anything, but I dare to guess these are liveCD/qemu only issues, and you won't get these problems if you install it.
CORRECTION!: The terminal actually does work if you log in as guest (password guest) instead of root (password root)
CORRECTION2!: Now it does work for root too. Weeeeeird.
Oh another one to add to the tryout list.
Judging from what you say and from the screenshots it sounds like an interesting system and the mere fact that it is GPLed gives it great potential for the future I would say.
On the shots it has kind of BeOS like feeling, especially on this screenshot.
I'm definitely gonna download this one...
Something seems to be wrong with the download link as it leads me to an empty page here: http://www.syllable-norden.info/int_download.php?view.43
Where have you downloaded it?
Thanks
Cool looks good. Would it be reviewable. ie. is there enought to write about?
The link for the livecd does work: http://www.syllable-norden.info/int_download.php?view.44
If you want the installable version: sourceforge page
As for the question whether it would be reviewable: I think so. The ease of installation can be reviewed, the apps that have been written especially for Syllable, the design of the UI, the things that make this OS different from others (boots very fast, no textmode only GUI but there is a terminal application to run textmode apps designed for UNIX-like OSes)...
yes, there is a BeOS theme, but it's definitely not a BeOS clone.
Until it supports the Mozilla platform, it doesn't intrest me.
Plus I don't like how the GUI is integrated into the OS. Doesn't look like you can change the WM or use it without the GUI.
That's right, you can't use it without the GUI, so it's not a good choice for a server. OTOH if you want a GUI and you don't want to wait ages for that GUI to start, then use Syllable and not somethingelse+X11 .
I think you can't replace the wm, but instead of that you can choose a different theme, which does or can do much more than just changing the colors.
Well I don't see anything inherently wrong with not being able to change the WM or run without a GUI. If it is Free Software and someone wants to use such an OS sure go ahead. If it ever becomes good and popular it can take a nice place as a desktop operating system for people who aren't into non-GUI stuff anyway and don't crave so much for GUI customizations.
If windows was Free Software I wouldn't mind it either, even though it's security issues should be alarming to everyone, the thing is those would be much easily and quickly fixed if the source was free.
I don't believe windows could be fixed quickly and easily, without breaking a lot of software that runs on top of it that is. For example many apps need admin rights...
Anyway, you can run all your textmode software on Syllable, it will look quite like running it in an xterm.
Please note the correction in the initial post: the terminal DOES work.
I've downloaded a Syllable VMWare image to see if it could work with Qemu, and it kind of boots, but with lots of failures and then freezes in the end with a fuzzy picture.
Unfortunately, Qemu images that are available for Syllable are quite outdated..
I might go and look for some user made newer ones though..
no, just download the livecd image, then run
qemu -boot d -cdrom Syllable-0.6.1-LiveCD1.iso
That should do the trick. It first displays lots of white on blue text, then some weird screens and black screens, and then a login screen. Be patient, qemu is slow.
Also, if the (S) menu doesn't contain any or just very few items, just log out and back in until it contains a decent amount. Same thing about the terminal icon on the desktop. I think qemu's sluggishness makes things time out and therefore not load. Either that or it's just buggy.
Thanks, I'll try that.
I am thinking maybe I could give Xen a go as well. I imagine it's not as simple to setup and use, but if I am going to test alot of OS's, distros and such (of which some I might review) it might be worth it.
The future is indeed interesting. Alot of these new OS's are Free Software which gives them a great potential of community involvement and much lesser chances of failing and dieing.
I downloaded the livecd and tried it in Qemu and it works, though it boots really slowly in it. However it doesn't appear to be very stable. I've launched theme preferences and selected a Beish theme after which the theme preferences window stopped responding. Soon the whole system was frozen except the mouse, or at least it appeared so..
Not sure if it's because of Qemu or Syllable itself. But anyway, it runs faster than Haiku OS in Qemu and is apparently more complete.
I'm yet to play with it more. It looks pretty interesting.
Oh and yeah, I logged in as root/root and terminal is there on the desktop. I haven't launched it yet though..
Yes, the terminal icon is always there, but it does not always work. My general impression is that Haiku is slightly more stable and boots faster, but Syllable is faster after booting (although that (S) menu can take forever before it displays the first time), is more complete, and multiuser.
Haiku has more apps in theory (existing BeOS apps), Syllable has more in practice right now.
Which OS do I choose?
Linux
That was a nice rundown of pros and cons between the two.
I would choose GNU/Linux too, of course, but who knows what Haiku and Syllable develop into in the future. Maybe some of us some day consider switching wholesale to them.