With all the recent hype surrounding Google's Chrome, it's refreshing to see someone taking a few steps back and looking at the bigger picture. Superlatives were abound about Chrome (I personally really like it), but some people really took it overboard - take TechCrunch for instance: "Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows." Seeing my nationality, I know a tulip mania when I see one. So does Ted Dziuba.
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Member since:2007-03-04
I'm not surprised it has been closed. I don't see any compelling reason to use it. What about even one more layer and developping a so-called "operating system" that would run inside WebOS (or YouOS, if you want)?
An operating system is a computer program that is used as an interface between hardware and software applications so that an application can store information onto a HDD, communicate with a sound board, receive input from a keyboard, etc... YouOS is not developed in ASM or C AFAIK. We could call it a web-based personal manager maybe? Nothing more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
Member since:2006-09-27
There's still eyeOS:
http://eyeos.org
BTW, this concept of Web-OS is something you install in a server and access from any browser. The server is then the analog of your computer, where you install all your stuff. Chrome is more like a Cloud-OS, since there's no unique place where your programs and data are. It's more appropriate for SAAS.
Some are objecting to the use of the word "Operating system" for this kind of platforms. That's a matter of terminology. Strictly speaking they are probably correct, but what counts is what the platform is, the thing that application developers target. If Chrome becomes the platform, then the OS becomes like a driver, just and "implementation detail", as Sebastian Kuegler from KDE put it.
What would be desirable, then, is to cut off a few layers of the stack. Decide what the desired platform and behavior is, and then get it as close to the metal as possible. An example of that is the 9p protocol from Plan9. I mean, if we want computers to be wired to each other, why are their communication protocols so verbous?
Member since:
2008-04-08
Check out youos.com... errrr never mind they shut it down. It was an Java script OS run in a browser.
Krreagan