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DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

dustinbrett.com

11–20 of 141 posts

Re: DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

#11
post #6

I do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example. Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a cle…

So something like X11?

Re: DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

#12
post #6

I do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example. Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a cle…

Sandstorm really had this kind of feeling. Not that it presented as a desktop environment visually - but it offered a much more integrated “computer” of documents versus silod web site apps where you need to open each site to see the files in the app. https://sandstorm.io/

On the other side of things, you can just run an SSH + X11 server for remoting; and have fairly good integration between windows controlled by a remote process on your desktop, and windows controlled by a process on your laptop. Over fast links it’s nicer than RDP kinds of protocols.

Finally Plan 9 really runs with this idea - you can mount the processors of another system to use them on yours. Plan 9 is a distributed operating system, designed to make a network of heterogeneous and geographically separated computers function as a single system. In a typical Plan 9 installation, users work at terminals running the window system rio, and they access CPU servers which handle computation-intensive processes.

Re: DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

#13
post #12
post #6

I do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example. Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a cle…

Sandstorm really had this kind of feeling. Not that it presented as a desktop environment visually - but it offered a much more integrated “computer” of documents versus silod web site apps where you need to open each site to see the files in the app. https://sandstorm.io/ On the other side of things, you can just run an SSH + X11 server for remoting; and have fairly good integration between windows controlled by a r…

Plan B (built on top of Plan 9) and Octopus (built on top of Inferno) were closer to that - Plan 9 and Inferno had the fundamental operators but not the environment to exploit something like that, whereas Plan B/Octopus had interesting idea of "Personal Mainframe" which centralised a single person's computing experience, while making the peripherals composable.

This meant for example that you could have your "personal mainframe" in your office, then go with your "laptop terminal" to a conference hall, and when it came to your presentation instead of attaching the laptop to a display, a room-local computer could be used for its resources like screen and audio. All the while you have continuity because applications stored the state on your "mainframe"

Re: DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

#15
post #6

I do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example. Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a cle…

So something like X11?

Yes somewhat, but if I understand X11 is closer to a 'thin client' where X11 only handles drawing and moving windows on the display and interacting with a mouse, keyboard or touchscreen. This is opposite to how most a typical web browser experience works, which much of the logic happening on the client side (e.g. UI elements)

Re: DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser

#17
It's kind of fitting he works at Microsoft when the desktop heavily feels like Windows. Dragging and dropping everything feels super satisfying. This must be the first native-style UI for the web that almost feels perfect (the only glitches I see is mouse-over an icon has the icon move slightly up, probably as borders are added changing their position ever so slightly. I'm sure it would be easy to fix.)
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