Imagine a full OS running inside your web browser.
What do you think?
My first reaction was, "who would need an OS inside a browser?", and "If I had a browser running, then I must have an OS running behind it. So why would I need 2 OSes running at the same time?". However, after I played around with this web operating system for a while, I realized that there might be more than I have thought.
The basic idea behind YouOS is an web-based operating system running on one big virtual machine. Users who log in and use YouOS are thus sharing this virtual machine and its filesystem. Therefore, YouOS implements the idea of sharing from the ground up! It just depends on whether you allow the other users to view/edit your files, whereas the real sharing is done by the OS. Those files are not on your local machine anyway, so you don't have to bother to send your files back and forth, making backups in the process.
Another good thing about YouOS is platform independency. You can access the same interface, the same files and the same environment from any gadgets that you own, be it a real PC, or other handhelds as long as you can run a browser on it.
Of course, as it is stated in the website of YouOS. It is still on an early experimental stage and the goal is still far away. But what is important here is the idea of the web operating system. I think I will register for an account and play around with it for a longer while so that I wouldn't be left behind when everyone else have already got used to it.
One more thing. As it has been happening all the time, there might be more web operating systems like this popping up in the near future. If there is no standard established amongst them, then we will end up where we have started, facing all the problems caused by the differences amongst several platforms, once again.
And this is a more in-depth article on Slate.com. Have a good read.
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2 comments:
ahhh... too difficult topic this time. I shall stay out of it :p
To Sue> hahaha :D
To CY>
How about this?
An enterprise can build its own web OS and the workers are required to use only this web OS, whether at the office or when they work out. Then, as long as they take care of the authentication security part, they can have all their data on the servers inside the Enterprise. Even if the notebooks or PCs got stolen, nobody can peep into the enterprise data, since those notebooks, PCs are just clients and don't have anything valuable on them. Javascript support is not an issue here coz they can make it active by default.
I dun think they are gonna implement CPU intensive program soon. But this may be possible with the advances in the hardware part. And don't forget about the Grid(a network of many computers working together as one).
Individual AJAX program requires you to switch browser windows... not so efficient for me. And to hide the user from the fact that they are using a complete OS through a browser's window, I think they should display it fullscreen :P
But they only thing that I am against them(the project, not the idea) is that the backend of the system is not open-source!!! :(
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