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New Linux Desktop Environment Built on Firefox
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." "
Already slashdotted after the first comment, so ... this is what the future web-desktop will be like huh?
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.
the apps include a very simple word processor and a spreadsheet that could work from a server hosted within the company intranet... this would be a very useful project indeed. Basic features would do - no need for all that fancy schmancy stuff.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
right alongside desktop apps (through compositing).
At first I thought that said through composting. Guess you'd have to call that organic computing.
On a serious note....Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.
The "trust" issue would loom very large in that statement. Provides some interesting possibilities all the same.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.
Second, the applications are not likely to depend on the speed of the processor for much, in the user's experience. Now obviously, if we're using bloated software like Word to accomplish what notepad could do, we'll feel the hit. On the other hand, I'm consistently frustrated by the sloth of OO apps. So if FIrefox offers an equally slow solution that is better integrated, I say it's a winner.
Of course, I haven't RTFA, as it is FSD'ed.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
On this interpretation, we should never use artificial intelligence because of Clippy.
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This guy is probably doing something similar. Symphony OS.
c reenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=Symphony %20OS%202006-12%20Beta
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/s
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
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.
Here's the Google Cache:
p yrodesktop.org/+http://pyrodesktop.org&hl=en&ct=cl nk&cd=1&gl=us
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:6EoAZGSE90IJ:
Wasn't this done with MS in Windows 98, the Active Desktop? See how well that worked? Why would anyone want this?
.NET 3.0 except it's much slower, much less secure and runs on JavaScript. Complete winner!
That was done in 1998. It was early Web 1.0, and people didn't dig web stuff so much. But now, it's different. There are plenty of uses for a web based desktop, and to quote their site:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@pyrodesktop.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
I think Microsoft is totally shaking in their boots at the thought of Pyro: just consider, a connected, integrated, web desktop. It's just like
I don't know, but (the article is /.ted) but it sounds more like MS's HTAs - their web-as-a-desktop-app system. (HTA = Hypertext Application). They used IE as a client front end to a local (or remote) web application. It was hosted in IE but without titlebar, buttons etc. It also ran in an increased security environment (as you'd expect a desktop app to interact with the filesystem, for example, that normal web apps hosted in a 'normal' browser would not get acess to).
.NET, and lost interest in it.
It semed like a good idea, and enabled you to write desktop/web applications, but it never quite caught on, MS moved to Jav, sorry
Active Desktop was just a way of putting content on your dekstop instead of a static image. I think it was a little before its time due to everyone using dial-up modems instead of always-on broadband. If someone did it today, we'd have the advantage of a lot of experience in using web applications, faster networking and better security. Imagine what it could be in an Ubuntu environment, it could easily be a new desktop paradigm that makes Window's taskbar-based system look old and boring.
Until Firefox can solve some of the many, many bugs still present in it's product, I think that this entire discussion is silly.
I don't respond to AC's.
Given that Firefox already has issues with ignoring user input at various times, I guess Pyro will also bring that ability to ignore the user to the Linux desktop, as it has existed in Windows since the beginning?
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
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!
Am I the only one to be mightily impressed at the idea of implementing Expose in javascript??
I haven't looked yet at how well they accomplished this, but damn, I love the idea of having a common Expose-like function available to me on all the modern OS's I am forced to use daily.
If it's GPL'ed I will check it out.
No, it ran as the currently logged in user. The problem is that Windows insists during setup that the user create an administrator account for everyday use. It's the same scenario. (Well, minus the horrible ActiveX crap - noone really likes that)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
First, spelling check. It's "standard", with a d.
Second, are you absolutely sure there's no way it could have messed up unless it was gnome-control-center? Really? For example: bad RAM, bad disk, etc could all be at fault here. I'm not saying it couldn't possibly be gnome-control-center, but understand that it can't possibly protect you from anything you could possibly do -- and, in fact, a powerful tool should make it possible to hose your system if you were really trying to. (For exmaple, gconf.)
Third, you should have had backups, anyway. It's not difficult -- back up /home and /etc and you can rebuild just about your entire desktop from scratch, or carry it from distro to distro.
There's no getting around this. Or rather, none of the ways around it are worth it.
You could force everything to be completely integrated, so that installing a single app requires pulling in tons of dependencies, many of them completely unrelated. Maybe it's just me, but this seems to happen a LOT more with KDE apps than with GTK ones -- maybe because they're typically KDE apps, not QT apps, whereas the other side is usually GTK apps, not GNOME apps.
That's probably what you meant -- KDE does have a pretty bad case of not-invented-here syndrome, and it doesn't seem to be using Cairo, for example. But GNOME and KDE both use dbus and X11, for example. Would you rather that these not be separate projects?
Or, you could force every app to rewrite all the functionality by itself, because you don't like having a separate project for a shared library. Obviously, this is a retarded idea, and you're a retarded person if that's what you were suggesting.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!