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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.
"
From the title it looked like this was a bad "in soviet Russia" joke...
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Well, breaking about two weeks after Slate had an article on it.
"Your web browser text-based web browser"
Viva la redundancy!
Kidding, I know you os is it's name. I still don't see the point in it until there's an OS independant browser. Still, it's a step forward.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
While the idea is great, I will not bite in this case because my ISP places a limit on how much traffic can be allowed through my network interface with my current plan. Even though I can "upgrade", the costs are just prohibitive. Sorry, I will not bite.
It's a bunch of applications. Yes, if you're Joe Sixpack, then that's what defines an OS, but it's not a real OS. I'm not sure what it's scheduling characteristics are, it probably doesn't have peripherals (or can you plugin your USB stick or camera?), I'm not sure it has swapping, etc...
And is there an SDK around? If so, it'd sound like the ideal computing slave. SETI here goes... (ok, maybe it has resource quotas, which would actually make it an interesting project...)
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...
This is pretty similar to EyeOS ( http://eyeos.org/ ), which runs on any web server and lets you use apps (IM, RSS, web browser, games, etc) in it, change the background etc. I've got this running on my web server, and if nothing else it's great when I want to check the /. RSS while away from home :P
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?
Ever had that message with your local workstation?
.NET, very tough in webapps or server-pushing information to the client, requires long-lasting GET requests filtered by many firewalls)
This is just another playground for the next gen. of Dot-Com-Companies, nothing serious.
a.) web-applications rely on high-speed-always-on internet connections (I'll be in an airplane this afternoon, no text processing for me then?)
b.) Will always offer less features and a bad UI compared to classical desktop applications, because restricted by web browser capablilites
c.) are currently much harder to code than classical desktop apps (e.g. editable drop down boxes anyone? Easy thing in NetBeans/VS
d.) collaborative features are easily added to classical desktop apps
Conclusion: less possibilities, harder to code (you'll always be tricking, hacking to get a nice effect), bad UI (restricted by browsers)
The only competition to desktop apps I do currently see is MS XAML.
Bye!
I think the point is that they can be used from quite much any modern enough PC, even PCs you can't really go and install an X server onto. Think libraries, certain computer labs, maybe friends' places etc.
YouOS has been around for a while, and it's part of a growing trend of online desktops (I refuse to refer to them as "Online OSes", because they're simply a desktop page that launches programs, an alternative to Explorer at best).
.de ?)
:)
If you're interested in this area, check out also:
FlyaKiteOSX
the 30Boxes Webtop
EyeOS
Computadora (in Spanish, even though
Goowy (it's in Flash though)
And of course, because this is Slashdot, I couldn't go without mentionning that Google is probably preparing their own, since their recent focus on releasing equivalents of desktop applications online (Notes, Excel, Word, Calendar, Picasa, etc)
I have spent almost a year working on a project that is nearly identical to (if less mature than) YouOS. Atomic OS is not as advanced as YouOS due to lack of hackers and poor timing.
This is driving me nuts. I logged into /. went through the headlines, then posted an article about Atomic OS. When I got back to the developers headlines... Boom. YouOS.
Aaaarghh!
I never can understand the reasons for the fantastic WebOS in this Web 2.0 era. Your computer needs an operating system to communicate with the hardware and to respond to events. Frankly, without an OS your computer is just a fancy bunch of IC's and wires. For using the internet sanely your computer has to be able to: communicate fully with TCP/IP, render graphics on your screen, respond to keyboard and mouse events... And this is just a short list, you could add lots more.
And for a fully-fledge WebOS 2.0 you need to process JavaScript, AJAX and many other advanced and "new" web technologies.
So my point is, that you already need a pretty advanced OS to enable you to use those amazingly fantastic WebOS for Web 2.0. So, the whole concept is to have an OS within your perfectly good OS. And that OS has to be launched inside a browser, and communicate over the internet. As opposed to your perfectly fine native OS already running.
For hecks sake, you can get a bloody thumbdrive if the idea is that you want to have certain things with you independently of the computer you're using right? Put Portable OOO and Portable Firefox on it. And perhaps all your documents as well as whatever else you need. You could even put Linux on your thumbdrive.
I just don't get the whole concept of having those wonderful WebOS around....
So... to run this OS, I need an OS to run the browser I can run that OS in... Doesn't sound like overkill at all
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.
I Totally agree with you, besides, if your connection can run this stuff, it surely can give you a decent quality for a VNC session back home.
Having good web-based apps is greate, but only if you accept that it's a web app and so design it as such (Like gmail or google calendar). But if you try to emulate the look&feel of a classical desktop, you are screwed.
I use a lot of webapps, I have gmail and gmail for your domain for my company's website, google calendar runs my life, Pandora takes care of my music, etc.
This is truly comfortable if you travel a lot, like me.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
A better web based OS could be made by allowing people to ssh into a computer running emacs. Then you'd have a full fledged OS, instead of a limited one like this. Plus, if you added vim, you would have a good text editor.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Is it really an OS if it requires a web browser? I don't know about you, but I expect my OS to do the simple things. Like boot. And manage devices.
Help us build a better map!
Could someone please explain to me why this is a great idea? Besides the novelty. What place does YouOS have in a world where people (well, geeks, actually) debate endlessly about which desktop is the fastest/full featured/whatever? Certainly YouOS would fail to meet most anyone's criteria for a generally useful desktop.
Come on people, this "web based OS" idea is stupid. Admit it. And it is not just because of fact that "Operating System" is a great misnomer in this case. From their FAQ:
"Need to send or receive email or text/instant messages? We're working on providing full communication APIs."
If that gets you excited, then I have a network stack written in BASIC to sell you. ANd it runs in a browser! Amazing, huh? Forget the fact that your current operating system already comes with a perfectly good network stack and running mine would be completely redundant and pointless.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
This is a great idea in the same way that Citrix, Terminal Server, and X in general is a good idea: you need next to nothing to run big, complex, perhaps very expensive software. This site doesn't have any of that, trying instead to replicate a typical desktop, but the idea is a great one and one I"m sure we'll see a lot more in the future. While X is defacto free but can't be run through a browser, Citrix and Termnial Server (both of which do have browser versions), cost a lot of money in liceneses, etc.
Yes, technically it isn't an OS and it's performance isn't all that great, but they're not exactly promising anything; this makes for a good proof of conceptm and I wouldn't be surprised if somebody like SalesForce takes the idea and runs with it; I think we'll probably see *real* web-based desktops within ten years (where the apps are full enough featured and fast) and don't need activex or java.
It is complete nonsense to call this webpages a Operating System (OS). A more suitable term is WEBSHELL.
You cant print from within a shell without an OS. Just like these Web shells or pages with dynamic web content..
Remember when win 3.1 was called "OS"?? When it really was a shell on a Disk OS.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Yeah...I had the same thought. Then I launced bitybrowser (within YouOS) and surfed over to www.youos.com...
Your monitor is staring at you.
Most people have seen this coming for quite some time, but let's have a look at what this really seems to be (I cannot access it at the moment, due to to many users being logged in).
Basically, AJAX and these "Operating Systems" have arisen from the browsers capability nudging towards that of a remote desktop client, or so it seems. The browser is still made to deliver HTML, remember that.
What if someone made a much more powerfull client-side application that could do what the Javascript/DOM model does, but add support for harware accelerated graphics, and API's actually designed for this purpose? I guess FireFox's Canvas is a start, but its not in any way like FF or IE is designed to do this kind of stuff. People have simply discovered it's possible by accident, and started building these OSes. I love remote X-sessions and Remote Desktop towards my workstation, it's much richer than what your browser can deliver, but of course to slow for large scale applications, and to much of the processing happens server-side.
It would be a little bit like an X-Windows client I guess, only that more of the processing happens client-side. Apps would be downloaded in text/XML, and Javascript or similar could be used to add dynamics. Possibly a code-behind type thing would be betterm but I really have no clue (:
So, in essence, the server becomes a application dispenser, and a data source. Then the "player", optimized for the client's architetcure, would run the app.
Best,
. Knut