Submitted by Two preview articles give a taste of the new proof-of-concept desktop environment Pyro. Based on Firefox, used in conjunction with X’s compositing extensions, Pyro allows web applications to behave like full-fledged ones running alongside traditional Linux apps. Perhaps most tantalizing of all, Pyro is a simple Firefox-extension-install away. Ars Technica has a backgrounder on the project, while Desktoplinux spotlights potential security concerns.
Link dead..
Like the active desktop on windows 98+. I just hope this is better implemented than that old mess. Otherwise it won’t catch up.
Web applications are trying to become more “desktop-like” with AJAX. At the same time, desktop applications are trying to be more “web-like” with the Gnome online desktop, etc. I imagine they will both meet somewhere in the middle, probably near Scranton. Seriously, to me, the web is just another stream for sending and receiving data – no different that a hard-drive, console, etc. A long time ago, CD-ROMs were revolutionary and there were CD-ROM applications. It sounds foolish today – CD-ROM is just another storage medium. I hope someday the web is the same – speaking to other apps (e.g., via the web or web-services) is no different that speaking to other processes (IPC). It’s time for the dividing line to disappear.
Very true. It’s hard to understand exactly why the web spawned a mess of development technologies and became the dominant delivery mechanism for remote applications. By most accounts, the desktop had much more advanced development environments all along. The desktop has had secure, effective protocols for remote application delivery since when they were called terminals.
The age of dial-up may have propelled the web to greatness. Connections were too slow to deal with typical desktop applications, so remote applications had to be very simple to run over the Internet. The young web was perfect for the bandwidth limitations of the time. The web had to become much richer very rapidly to fill broadband connections. Desktop frameworks should have been a natural solution for the broadband Internet.
Part of it was Microsoft’s doing. They got so scared of the web as an application platform that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they had continued to play their game, they could have marketed the premier environment for developing remote applications. They could have ignored Netscape, acquired Citrix, and forged their own path.
Who wants to deal with AJAX when they could develop with Qt or Visual Studio? Is Javascript really the ultimate solution for client rendering? What about RDP or NX?
We can bring desktop applications to the web just as easily as we can bring web applications to the desktop. Google Maps is neat and all, but isn’t part of its appeal that it doesn’t suck like most of the web? Are we really getting the best remote applications that our bandwidth will allow?
I dunno. I would consider Google Maps to be a little more than neat. It has fundamentally changed the way I interact with the world, similar to buying a cell phone.
This sort of life-experience changing stuff is happening on the Web right now. Love it or hate it.
There are a number of strong economic and technical reasons for this, centered around distribution mechanisms, user access, revenue possibilities, etc. These factors have never been very good for desktop apps, especially Linux desktop apps.
Pyro is trying to allow the tech that is changing our lives to go further. Beyond what the OS vendors feel comfortable with and have traditionally allowed.
Where it’ll go I have no idea, but it’s a more promising route than hoping that smart, motivated people will come back to Qt or Gtk. They won’t.
Because native toolkits and languages provide a richer environment currently doesn’t mean that the factors for Web uptake mentioned above will go away. They won’t.
The Web will just fill the current gaps. Try to remember what Gtk and Qt were like 5 or 10 years ago, and think about all the amazing gains the free desktops have made in that time.
Now imagine 100x more money and energy going into pushing that progress. What could have been accomplished? This is what you have on the Web today, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
I still don’t understand why I would ever want to render
. I like my native Linux applications just the way they are.
Edited 2007-07-25 17:35
Hehe, eventually someone will rewrite the Linux kernel in python and xul
PS. I’m not stupid, it was only a joke.
It looks like Symphony OS with out the innovative attention to usability theories. http://www.symphonyos.com/cms/