A Mozilla Desktop Environment?

Andreas writes "A discussion at the mozilla.dev.planning list has given the birth to the idea of a Mozilla Desktop Environment. This sure sounds like a possibility for Mozilla as it already has many of the applications needed; and the company is thoroughly familiar with XUL, which is a more-than-potent language upon which to build a desktop environment. By building a desktop environment Mozilla wouldn't have to worry about drivers (and such) and could choose from a variety of kernels, and still be in the center of attention. Mozilla has to expand some of the applications for this to work, though, like adding local file management with Firefox."

Comments

Oh no! Don't do it!

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Quote:

I'm only proposing that we make a desktop environment, the same thing that KDE and Gnome, are. I can understand the desire to make everything XUL from top to bottom but, unless they have completely fixed (not improved--fixed) all possible bugs in the browser, their efforts are better directed elsewhere. Unless they plan on replacing the X11 system then it would be better for the community (as a growing whole) for them to maintain a diverse and working relationship with the existing groups. Cross-pollinate--don't assimilate.

The only reason I mentioned a "Mozilla OS" is because we'd probably also want to release distributions for one of more specific kernels as a whole OS Most distros have Mozilla packages. Is this a proposition for another distro?

other applications built with the Mozilla platform available then. Currently there are plenty of kernels to put a Mozilla desktop environment on. That's really the point. Unless they plan on making a true MozillaOS, converting all the middle layers of the OS into a ROM chip, and putting MozOS in the boot sector then, again, the efforts of a project are best spent improving code, debugging, and interfacing with the other prominent community projects.

Maybe we need to remind ourselves of the trials, tribulations, and pitfalls of both cruft (old junk) and feature creep (glitz and glam just for the sake of glitz and glam are neat--but they don't make for a good project path until it's stabilized).

Don't bother clicking links...

[Anonymous Coward]

The link which masquerades as being informative is to the submitter's website. It is no more informative and filled with just as much random conjecture as the summary here. And you get the thrill of seeing ads.

The Google Groups link is a dozen or so messages from a handful of people. It's a thread of "I like XUL and I think this could be a neat idea but there's no special work being done on this."

This is an article about something being possible, a something which has been thought of a hundred times before.

Breaking news!!

Mezzo Desktop Environment & Symphony OS

[Gavin86]

I remember searching for such a Desktop Environment a year or two ago after experimenting with XUL, I ran across Symphony OS (http://www.symphonyos.com/) which uses the Mozilla platform for rendering and applications. It is called the "Mezzo Desktop Environment" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_%28desktop_env ironment%29), and is available in Debian package format.

I remember testing a live-cd of symphony about a year ago and it seemed pretty intriguing. I really liked the desktop interface.

But anyway, from what wikipedia says, the Mezzo Desktop Environment is an incomplete platform (whatever that means), and if it is correct there appears to be work unfinished. However, anyone interested in contributing might want to take a peek under the hood and see if that project can be helpful and exactly what is "incomplete" about it.

Re:Oh no! Don't do it!

[AKAImBatman]

Good grief. The whole lot of you need a good whack upside the head to straighten you out.

• XUL is not that slow. I don't know where you get this idea, but it's performance is more than acceptable for pretty much any GUI you might make. I don't recommend writing a video game in it, but that should go without saying.
  
• ECMAScript/Javascript *is* slow. However, it's also just glue code. The time it takes to shunt a button press from the Javascript system to underlying C/C++ code is negligable.
  
• Despite the slowness of Javascript due to interpretation (which is a feature, not a bug), it's more than fast enough to run a lot of applications. The FireFox GUI, for example, is a Javascript application sitting on top of the XUL/XPCOM system. Yet no one complains that their button presses are too slow.
  
• Java is definitely NOT slow. I'm not going to open this can of worms again (you can search my 5,000 other posts on the topic), but I am going to point out that your example is so much FUD. JavaOS didn't fail because of its GUI, it failed because it wasn't a very good system. In fact, it wasn't actually a full desktop system. More of a rich client type of thing. Which is why the JNode folks are working on a fully modern OS written in 100% Java. Including the kernel and drivers.
  

Re:I have an idea

[Crayon Kid]

This very much could be a step in the direction they already took.

Doesn't have to be. Actually, this idea has already been done, and done beautifully. It was called OEOne Homebase Desktop. It was a complete desktop environment built on XUL, and incidentally "XUL desktop environment" is the appropriate name for something like this. "Mozilla" is either the foundation or the former browser suite built on XUL. XUL is the platform.

So, you can see what the OEOne desktop looked like if you search Google images for oeone or oeone homebase. It was a fully integrated environment, which means mail, calendar, contacts, browser, text processor, image album, music and video player, basically everything you'd need for your basic office/home desktop.

OEOne still appears in the Mozilla Hall of Fame as such, even though they renamed themselves Axentra.com at some point. The Homebase desktop still appears in their press releases up to 2002, then it was released as open source as the Penzilla Desktop and abandoned as far as OEOne was concerned. But while it ran it also sponsored a few other developments, such as AbiMoz, which integrates AbiWord inside Mozilla.

Homebase wasn't a "traditional", "generic" desktop, but more of a specialized environment, aimed specifically at office productivity and entertainment. It had a "home page" which aggregated news, weather, contacts, new mail and whatnot. It would have been ideal for PDA's. I never understood why it was so poorly publicized and why it seems to have missed so many trains.

Summary is wildly misleading

[Anthracks]

I know this is Slashdot and all, but the article summary is grossly misleading. This is a public newsgroup. A random person, not affiliated with Mozilla, posted a message saying "hey, you guys should make Mozilla into an OS!!"

Mike Beltzner and Stuart Parmenter, who actually work for Mozilla, respond by saying "no, that idea actually sucks".

Somehow, this makes it onto Slashdot as "ZOMG Mozilla is making an os CONFIRMED!!!!!111oneeleventy!!11" Please stop spreading ridiculous, baseless claims.