Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Linux Desktop Environment Built on Firefox

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the believe-it-when-it's-useful dept.

IL-CSIXTY4 writes "'Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.' This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript." "

9 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. IE4 Anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Didn't we learn our lesson with Active Desktop? This is one of the reasons I use Firefox instead of IE. It's not so tied into the OS that when it crashes, it's taking down other apps as well.

    1. Re:IE4 Anyone? by digitalaudiorock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Didn't we learn our lesson with Active Desktop? ...and why would anyone want this anyway? The only real reason MS did this sort of thing was to support their legal argument that IE was a necessary and integral part of the OS. This is just as bad as the awful practice of embedding other applications in the browser by default instead of launching the appropriate applications externally (konqueror for example). Why does everyone want to copy all the worst ideas MS has had for browser functionality?
    2. Re:IE4 Anyone? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Think of it like this... HTML is the idiots way out of writing GUI code

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  2. Re:Haven't we done this before? by aminorex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On this interpretation, we should never use artificial intelligence because of Clippy.

    --
    -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  3. Re:Somehow familliar by suv4x4 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First, all computers wait at the same speed, and presumably the point here is to accomplish something heavily dependent on the network. Even the best network (in my experience) winds up being the limiting factor.

    "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not"
    Winnie The Pooh

    Modern computers don't make everything "wait" for something to happen. They multitask. Even modern browsers (Opera, IE, Safari) multitask. Firefox doesn't.

    For Firefox, loading of several files over the network is a Very Important Thing, and it'll just hang in mid-action waiting for the network to say something. That's pretty bad.

    JavaScript has no concept of threads. Also it has no concept of security, apart from the "100% trusted" or "100% not-trusted" sandbox.

    It'll be very funny to watch this project fail into obscurity, for those interested. I'm not.

  4. Re:First read by Cheesey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.

    Yeah, I don't like the sound of this either. Seems like a two-level trust scheme: trusted websites have access to everything.

    One of the design flaws in present day GUIs (including all the X11-based GUIs for Linux) is that one malicious application can compromise the entire GUI if it can open a window. This is true even if you take the sensible step of running untrusted applications as another user: you still have to give them access to your display, so (for example) a compromised Firefox can still act as a global keylogger even if it's running as nobody. There are ways to avoid this in X11 (using Xnest for example) but these are rarely used because they don't integrate well with other applications.

    Is that design flaw now being extended to include web applications loaded from a possibly compromised remote server? Written in Javascript, which has proved notoriously hard to secure? Sounds nasty. Secure sandboxing should be built into every level of both the OS and GUI design so that nothing has to be "trusted".

    --
    >north
    You're an immobile computer, remember?
  5. Re:Does this mean... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Didn't everyone agree a long time ago that integrating IE into the OS and using it as a shell was a bad idea?

    So what is it that makes this any different?

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  6. Re:Desktop environment built on bugs? by misleb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The bugs in Firefox are not nearly as significant as the shortcomings of XUL. XUL is definitly better for programming "rich" applications than HTML, but once you start using it you realize that the Mozilla team only developed XUL just enough to get the browser up and running. Last time I used XUL there were big parts that just didn't get any attention. And even if all the widgets did function as they were meant to, they'd still be a more limiting than common desktop toolkits. And then there's Javascript, which also shows its limitations when an app starts to get rather complex. Javascript, despite being object oriented on the surface, doesn't even have a proper class inheritance system.

    -matthew

    --
    "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  7. Use the hammer! by Brandybuck · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Use the hammer! When you need to insert a screw use a hammer to bash it in! When you need to saw some wood, use a hammer to break it apart! When you need a pair of tweezers to carefully manipulate a tiny electronic part, use a hammer to bash it into smithereens!

    When you're so tunnel blind that all you can see is the web, then everything starts looking like a web page.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!