Symphony OS

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**Symphony OS**
Symphony OS running Firefox in Mezzo
Website:	www.symphonyos.com
Company/ developer:	Symphony OS Project
OS family:	Linux
Source model:	Open source
Latest stable release:	2006-12 Beta / December 13, 2006
Kernel type:	Monolithic kernel
Default user interface:	Mezzo Desktop Environment
License:	Various
Working state:	Current

Symphony OS, or Symphony Linux, started out as a Knoppix-based LiveCD Linux distribution, created by Ryan Quinn and Jason Spisak. It is under active development, and is beta software.

Since its May 2006 release it is no longer based on Knoppix, but rather on Debian unstable, and features a functional hard drive installer.

The primary difference between Symphony OS and other distributions is the addition of the Mezzo desktop environment. This environment, like other aspects of Symphony, was designed with an eye towards extreme simplicity and usability. Symphony also includes its own Mozilla-driven application environment, called Orchestra.

Symphony OS uses a custom packaging system utilizing the *.sym package format; through a simple GUI interface a user may install any application in the Symphony library without dealing with "dependency hell". Because Symphony is Debian-based, it also supports the Debian package format.

[edit] Orchestra

Orchestra is an incomplete rapid application development environment which is being written for Symphony OS. It allows programs composed of HTML and CGI-style Perl to run as local GUI applications.

Orchestra is made up of two main parts: a lightweight localhost-only HTTP server written in Perl, and a slimmed down Mozilla renderer. Because Mozilla is used as the base for rendering Orchestra, applications can utilize the following technologies:

Plain HTML
JavaScript
Perl and CGI
Java applets (using a plugin)
Macromedia Flash applications (using a plugin)
Embedded media players (using a plugin)
XUL interfaces

[edit] Mezzo

Mezzo is the desktop environment created by Jason Spisak. Added to Symphony OS, it aims to pose a new way of presenting data to the user.

Mezzo disposes of standard concepts like "The desktop is a folder" and nested menu systems and instead presents all needed information directly to the user via the main desktop and four desk targets for tasks and files related to System, Programs, Files, and Trash. The developers claim that this makes the desktop easier to use.