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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." "

6 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:slashdotted after the first comment by jkrise · · Score: 4, Informative
    Already slashdotted after the first comment, so ... this is what the future web-desktop will be like huh?

    Not if the server is within the intranet. Here's the text from the site:

    What is Pyro?

    Flickr Add-on

    Exposé-alike

    Window Picker

    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.

    By merging the Web with the desktop, Pyro offers the first big step toward a new future for the Web and the applications built for it.

    In Pyro, Web content is no longer confined to the browser's window. Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.

    Imagine...
    Rich Web pages running side-by-side with native applications
    Single programming environment for the whole desktop
    Desktop-wide mashups, killer Web integration
    Novel desktop effects

    Pyro enables a desktop that tracks the latest in Web technology, and helps mold the future of the integrated Web.
    [edit]
    NEWS

    From Ars Technica

    July, 20 2007:
    Pyro project offers Firefox-based desktop environment on Ars Technica, by Ryan Paul.
    Pyro delivers Web apps to the Linux desktop on DesktopLinux.com.

    Check out the slides!

    July, 18 2007:
    Pyro Announced during GUADEC '07 Conference Keynote Speech.
    [edit]
    How does Pyro work?

    Pyro works fundamentally by drawing your entire computer screen as a Web Page, all from within Firefox. Indeed, at the core Pyro is simply a window manager which renders Web content alongside existing native applications.

    By leveraging the trusted Firefox Add-On system, all the capabilities of dynamic HTML, JavaScript, CSS, SVG, and Adobe Flash are available to enable incredible applications, extensions and themes.

    Bringing all these Web technologies together with the newest generation of Linux display technology, called window compositing, allows Pyro to integrate native applications as an intrinsic part of the overall Web Desktop, seamlessly merging the two.
    --
    If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
  3. 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-
  4. Re:Haven't we done this before? by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wasn't this done with MS in Windows 98, the Active Desktop? See how well that worked? Why would anyone want this?

    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 .NET 3.0 except it's much slower, much less secure and runs on JavaScript. Complete winner!

  5. Re:slashdotted after the first comment by ArsonSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Like they always say, "Those who don't learn Windows are doomed to repeat it."

    I think that's how that goes right?

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.