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I'm downloading it to try in a VM, but this website has almost 0 information on it. Where are the screenshots? FAQ? Where is any information about what this is or why I should use it?

The amount of time it would take to add this info must be a pittance compared to the dev hours they put into the OS!

There's a little more in the wiki entry for Mezzo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_%28desktop_environment%2...

Looks like it challenges elements of the desktop metaphor. The white paper (from 2005) on the ideas behind Mezzo explains a bit more: ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/voyager/docs/MezzoGreypaper.pdf

I remember Mezzo from that time. I found the ideas interesting but I couldn't understand why they couldn't plug them into an existing WM via plug-ins.
tl;dr: it's a Debian derivative. (I could be wrong. The wikipedia page is very mangled, and the website is entirely content free.)

It looks like it mainly exists as a platform for Mezzo, a desktop environment. I skimmed the design document; it's painfully opinionated, and keeps repeating the tired old cliché that users can't handle configuration options and we should make their lives easier but not letting them change anything...

The design document is 11 years old. Symphony has been a solo side project for the last 6-7 years with a release once or twice a year. There are a few more recent updates on the project's facebook page including screenshots of the new build in progress. https://www.facebook.com/SymphonyOS/
Are there any videos of the new Mezzo in action?

It occurs to me that my post was unduly dismissive. I totally believe that most modern UIs are horribly broken, and I completely sympathise with the 'burn it all down!' approach. But forcing everybody to change their workflow because reasons is, I believe, not it. (Though I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.)

Many of the concepts we built into Symphony have since become common in major desktop and mobile environments such as fullscreen menus and hot corners. The project started in 2004 when I as a web developer wanted to start playing in the Desktop space and decided to give it a shot with the tools I knew. These days it's a personal side project that I wish I had more time for. I do not have any videos of the new build in action, just the screenshots on the project's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SymphonyOS/ I'll see what I can do about that this weekend when I am back into it. The new build is coming together but I am not trying to convince anyone that this is what they should use. It's a fun personal hobby at least until more developers get involved.
Mmm.

I loathe hot corners; every day or so I accidentally lock the screen on my work macbook because when I fling the mouse pointer out of the way of what I'm looking at it hits a corner.

I also loathe full-screen menus. Screens are big, and having the entire contents of my screen be replaced with an information-heavy overlay is a non-trivial perceptual context switch which instantly causes me to lose my place in what I was doing. You underestimate how cheap a right-click menu selection can be; press, drag a small distance down, let go. And if the app's designed properly you can right click anywhere.

(Which, to be honest, most apps aren't. I grew up on RISC OS, which was driven entirely by context menus, and did this stuff right --- each app was a single context target. Modern apps have different contexts for every tiny UI element. Web browsers are particularly bad; I can't count the number of time I've done 'Open in new tab' rather than 'Back' because the mouse just happened to be on a link rather than a text area.)

My point is: one size doesn't fit all.

You know you can change the function of the hot corner (or simply disable it), right?

(In case you don’t know how: go to System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver → Screen Saver → Hot Corners…)

Silly question, the site notes the OS works on a low-memory platform, but the only download seems to be x64... Any plans for other release platforms rPI, oPI, etc?
It's absolutely possible but just a matter of available time/resources to support additional architectures. Prior to the latest release it was x86 only. The components of the desktop environment are fully portable since a lot of it is interpreted rather than compiled and the Mezzo desktop does run well on the rPI.
Wow, I remember hearing about this project over a decade ago, and liking some of the UI concepts. I followed the progress on the website for a little while, and then it seemed to stall, so I mostly forgot about it. As others have mentioned here, the website is unclear. What's going on with this? Is it progressing again?
I am the sole developer/maintainer of SymphonyOS these days and it showing up on HN today is a bit of a suprise since it's been several months since a public release.

Development is progressing albeit slowly since my day job takes up most of my time. I am currently in the middle of a rewrite of the desktop environment making changes like moving from FVWM to openbox and rewriting some Perl code that has been around in one form or another since 2004 in Ruby. I am hoping to have a new release out in January :)

I was very interested in this back in the day, in fact, I wrote a HOWTO to get the desktop bit run under Ubuntu: https://fak3r.com/2006/01/31/howto-mezzo-desktop-on-ubuntu/

I'm sure that's not going to work anymore, but I got a lot of questions and comments about that post, there was significant interest. Here's hoping a new release comes out in January and people can try it out.

I fail to see how a desktop UI based on HTML5 can be marketed as "light".
Absolutely. If anything, it should be tight, native code with little bells and whistles and tuned for speed. HTML5, its DOM model and Javascript are hardly fit for embedded / old / constrained environments.
It's a little light on details.

Is this related to the symphony framework in any way, or is it just a naming coincidence?

Name collision I believe, there's a russian language demo on youtube. It seems to me as a tiny fltk based WM to fit the current UX trends without having a "heavy" DE like Gnome3.
The PHP framework is Symfony, not Symphony.
It is a coincidence. SymphonyOS pre-dates the Symfony framework by almost a year. There are several projects out there in different spaces that are named Symphony
I work with the maintainer of Symphony and it is still "alive".
Perhaps you could find a volunteer with a little time to just add a list of packages and functions available from the live image to the Web site?

That would help the distro collectors to decide if this is interesting or not.

Distrowatch has a partial list here: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=symphony

Symphony showing up on the front page of HN was a total surprise to me today. As a sole developer my focus right now is on the new build and next month's release. I agree that the site is way to sparse and could be much better (it was thrown together in one evening) but focusing on the site would only take away from the limited time I have available to work on the distro itself. If after the January release I am able to get a few more developers involved I would love to improve the site, documentation and community around the project.

Get a volunteer on it. Someone who wants visibility and to develop some documentation skills. You stay with the main focus. Your HN exposure has convinced me to try the iso!!
Absolutely. Right now I am heads down to get the new rewrite released in January. Then the focus will be back on building the community, bringing on some more volunteer developers and putting together good documentation.
Any torrents we can use? I'd rather not get it through a huge HTTP download.
use Burnbit.com
There is remarkably little information on the website. I don't really want to download it without at least some indication that it's going to be worth my time. Is it just a modified fvwm running in Debian?
The currently available release is Debian based utilizing FVWM along with tint2 and a custom launcher written using HTML5 and WebKit. It's worth trying out in a VM or as a LiveDVD. I am currently in the process of doing a complete rewrite of most of the Desktop environment, replacing some very old Perl pieces with shiny new Ruby ones.
If it's as friendly as the website, there is still plenty to do there.
Unfortunately SymphonyOS is a one-person project right now and has been for a long time. My focus has been on the codebase and the website which I will admit is crap was put together in one evening. Currently I am in the middle of a complete rewrite of the desktop environment with a new release coming in January. Personally, I would not have submitted it to HN with the website in it's current state but was surprised this morning when a co-worker told me it was on the front page
Please not another Linux distro.
Which distro, in your opinion, is 100% perfect and can't be improved on?
FreeBSD :)
https://www.dragonflybsd.org/ those folks would disagree.
If it must be Linux, there's always https://crux.nu
Is this based on one of the popular linux distributions? If yes, which?
Currently Debian (Wheezy according to author of distro in this discussion) in future Ubuntu
Yay! Another F*cking linux distro to learn about! Linux distros may not be as common as JS frameworks, but they're almost there. Just install Arch and have done with it, people. It's like having your own distro, but without all the annoying bits.
Quote from Wikipedia page about the OS

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

Debian Sid is viable as the basis for desktop use, but there can be issues now and again and they can persist for a week or two. Just wondering at the target market for this one.

Always fun to do a dist-upgrade on anything Debian derived to see what happens...

The current release available on the website is based on Debian Wheezy and was released in January. A new release, with a completely re-written desktop, based on Ubuntu will be coming out next month.

The wikipedia page is out of date in many places

Thanks for clarification. Wheezy is mega-stable at present. Good luck with the transition to Ubuntu!! Quite a job.
What's your opinion of Arch vs Ubuntu? I've done Ubuntu for servers but haven't spent much time with Linux as a personal OS
Disclaimer: I'm a civilian. I just use Linux on a couple of laptops.

Arch is a rolling distro with fairly recent applications. Updates most days. Applications and system files stay in testing for a period then get pushed out. Very occasional breakage. Installer is bare-bones and uses linux commands a lot.

Ubuntu is a 'staged' distro as you well know. I imagine you were using Long Term Support versions of Ubuntu on your servers (10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and so on). The same applies to desktops so 14.04 has pretty stable packages. Ubuntu have announced application upgrades within the LTS period recently. The intermediate releases are supported for 9 months and will therefore have applications nearer to the most recent stable. Not too many updates once you get out of the immediate release period.

You might want to have a look at Debian. Unstable is not as quick as Arch with updated applications &c but pretty close. Stable is pretty stable for a couple of years at a time. Repository is huge.