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OEone HomeBase Desktop
Mike Potter writes "OEone has released its OEone HomeBase product as an open source project, and a free download. HomeBase is a complete operating environment that runs on top of Mozilla, with the base operating system being RedHat Linux 7.1 or 7.2. There's a review of it over at Newsforge. Some of the OEone software has already been released as open source to other projects. For instance, OEone's calendar was the basis of the Mozilla Calendar project."
It's an OS that runs on top of a BROWSER that run on top of another OS...
Could somebody explain to me the benefits of this? Please? Because I haven't the foggiest clue... Seems like a case of going around your elbow to get to your backside, but that's just me...
This actually looks like a potential OpenSource killer app. It gives most non-techie users what they need, what they want and what they will use, for a fair price. Like Lindows, but without the crappy attitude and marketing tripe. The screenshots look slick, and the stuff looks easy to use. Not something I would go all that wild over, but I can see my wife, or her parents for that matter, using this without any major hassles. Add OpenOffice.org to the mix, and you are done. Cool stuff!
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
"HomeBase is a complete operating environment that runs on top of Mozilla, with the base operating system being RedHat Linux 7.1 or 7.2"
:)
Oki Oki, how about Running it Under Wine in Internet Explorer window, which will be running VMWare plugin, inside which there will be RedHat Linux 7.2 running Mozilla and HomeBase on top of it... That will be really cool
At least someone is trying a tactic to finally get beyond the STANDARD desktop model. Instead with this setup you have a combo concept where you have a desktop model merged into a home page model. I doubt if you can count it as revolutionary but at least they tried to push the edge a bit.
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For an end user I think it might actually be better than some lame approach of merely emulating a windows desktop on top of linux the way a couple of distros seem to be going like the Lindows stuff.
What would be interesting to see is how a real life end user would react to such a setup.
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ACK
Well, I watched the flash demo and I have to say it looks like a very slick environment. Without using it, it's hard to say, but I think this is the kind of thing I could give to my mom to use.
You can argue about the technical merits of their implementation all day long but look at how elegant and aesthetically pleasing the interface is compared to say the screen shots on the website of say... your favorite window manager...
of course I thought, hey it's great someone is thinking about us stoners and providing the features that us really high end users need.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
At least as long as it will take users to realize that .doc is just a dot and three letters, designating a bunch of different file formats.
Incidentally, while reading such file formats is relatively easy, writing them so Word can read them is hard. .doc files, in addition to the document itself, contain lots of Word internal garbage: flip the wrong bit in the wrong place and watch Word burn in ashes when opening the document...
It took years of trial and error for the StarOffice guys (and others as well) to get this almost right for the existing versions of Office, so please don't say programmers don't "get it", because this is not true.
So somebody releases another Linux desktop. Not important. What is important is that it's based on XUL, theoretically a fully cross-platform toolkit; many simple XUL-based applets can run, unedited, on Mozilla on all platforms, at native speed.
Imagine if this OEone desktop can somehow be designed to work equally well on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. So that a user can have a completely identical desktop no matter where they are. It makes transition to Linux much easier than before. Eh?
One of the most interesting things to come from the review was the potential for this to be sold as an embedded computing device. I guess many Slashdot readers grew up in the age when we had Atari 400/800s, Vic 20s, Commodore 64s, BBC and Spectrums. The interesting thing about all these devices was that that only required a TV for display and they all had costs which were in the $100 - $350 range, low enough to be affordable to 11 / 12 / 13 years olds. For a long time after that we have been educated that $1000 has been the right price to pay for a PC with Games Consoles holding the low end of the market.
:-) ). The space advantages of having a keyboard sized device should not be underestimated, many people who have a PC for their home office don't want to take up the same space again for a kids device. As broadband take up increases this could share the bandwidth with other PCs and mobile devices.
An embedded device with this plus Linux in a single keyboard device surely hold the possibility of a return to those days. This would boot directly into the browser and mail / OpenOffice and thus provide more of the functionality than todays set top boxes usually provide. The interior of Linux would be hidden but would be available for those who wanted to hack on the system. The price could then be lower than even the bare bones systems Wal Mart has been selling recently (and remember many of us in Europe still can't get systems this cheap). By using the TV as an output device it could compete with Games Consoles and run software of similar quality (Doom, Quake World, Tux Racer
If they could get the price back to the level of the much loved home computers of old, I would buy one, if only to boot up Atari and Commodore emulators....
Open-Source components are available via CVS. Directions for anonymous CVS are here:
http://www.oeone.com/developers/
Cheers,
Vic