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You OS Web Based Operating System
Juergen writes "You OS comes from the MIT Labs and contains an email client, Chat Function, RSS Reader, and Text Editor.
YouOS is a web operating system that lets you run diverse applications within a web browser. Small applications like sticky notes or clocks. Large applications like word processing, mp3 players, and instant messaging. Even better, it's very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own.
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Well, breaking about two weeks after Slate had an article on it.
There should be a link to some of these pages, instead of no content linking to a practically blank page.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Upon seeing this, I immediately wondered whether the OS's web browser could run itself. I'm posting this comment from inside YouBrowser, which is running on YouOS inside of another YouBrowser inside of YouOS in Firefox. So looks like it's possible. I wonder how many levels you could go down...
Wow, this is innovative. Oh yes, I'll just stream my music up and YouOS will stream back the sound. If you have any even moderate amounts of music, this is sort of ridiculous on a limit. If I play 14 CD's, that's my entire months limit gone almost (10GB). Unless, of course, it compresses it or plays at a low bitrate, which rather belies the point of having one. What's wrong with Winamp?
When did we start confusing a desktop "shell" application and a handfull of basic functions with an "Operating System"?
An operating system is the code that provides the operating environment in which these programs run; not the programs themselves; a layer between the hardware and the application programs that provides a uniform environment, manages resources, arbitrates contentions, provides synchronization primatives such as semaphores, schedules CPU utilization, etc. Its "users" are programs, not people; its user interfaces are APIs; not shells. Shells and other application programs provide what we traditionally think of as USER interfaces for interacting with humans.
Along with the operating system one often finds a suite of shell programs (textual or GUI), basic applications and administrative programs to provide a user environment. These may be included in the operating system package, and are helpful or even essential in making the operating system usable but are not themselves the operating system or part of it.
This important distinction seems to be lost on the likes of Microsoft. Perhaps as a result, this disturbing misconception seems to be spreading throughout the community.
If the "You OS" involves somewhere an operating system, it lives on their server infrastructure and the users never see it.
That might work, except that the applicaitons are not actually running on a server. They are running with javascript in your browser. They merely communicate with the server for data. You'd be using yoru own CPU... with the slowness of Javascript vs. compiled.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
> While X is defacto free but can't be run through a browser,
... I doubt it'd work at an acceptable performance level over DSL/cable though.
I'm not so sure about that.
FWIW, it works ok on a LAN
EyeOS is quite cool, and yes, it is very easy to set up and host yourself, but YouOS also has a nice development screen that lets you easily create simple add-on applications. The YouOS users can easily generate new apps or tweak existing ones. Most apps currently are simple "Web site frames" while others are more complex. It'll be interesting to see just what new apps surface.
To me, the really exciting aspect of YouOS is its persistance. Open apps, logout, login again (on the same a different PC ans your workspace is where you left it. There aren't many online apps that do this...
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!