11 ms·

Kera Desktop: open-source, cross-platform, web-based desktop environment

343 points by mutlucany 3y ago

mutlucany 3y ago
Kera Desktop presents an new look and feel to your desktop workflow regardless of what OS you're using.
deleted 3y ago
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distortedsignal 3y ago
I think these types of projects are super cool, and being someone who was BORN IN THE 1980s, I really like the Desktop Analogy. Is there somewhere that I can look at several of these web-based desktop environments at the same time? Is there a good list of open-source web-based desktops that anyone knows of?
- syx 3y ago
  As a matter of fact there is [1] I'm personally curating it and check up on the links weekly. [1] https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops
  - distortedsignal 3y ago
    Delightful. Thank you!
ruined 3y ago
i missed this at first glance: the download page does have a "chrome app" option at the bottom https://desktop.kerahq.com/download/ https://desktop.kerahq.com/download/ https://gitlab.com/kerahq/releases/-/raw/main/Kera%20Desktop/Kera-Desktop-Chrome.zip https://gitlab.com/kerahq/releases/-/raw/main/Kera%20Desktop... edit: looks like this can't run on a Mac
- dreadlordbone 3y ago
  "Old" Chrome Apps were disabled, it doesn't run on any new versions of Chrome.
  - mutlucany 3y ago
    Until the latest update, it was possible to run it anyway. Very bad timing.
- replete 3y ago
  It worked for me, I unzipped the crx and dragged into chromium on latest macos
syx 3y ago
The design is very neatly done especially when the docks disappear and you place an app into full screen mode. I really like the concept overall, this looks like a cool side project!
chrisweekly 3y ago
Well done! Thanks for sharing!
anderspitman 3y ago
What does cross platform mean in this context? It appears to be Linux only to me.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- schemescape 3y ago
  The download page shows options for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Edit: and for Chrome (as a plug-in? I couldn’t tell). It looks like there is a separate download for an OS that is based on Linux. Is that what you saw?
  - anderspitman 3y ago
    I only looked at the main page and FAQ and only saw references to Linux. I'll have to dig into this later. Very curious how it works on Windows.
gnull 3y ago
> It is easy to get distracted when you do many different things on the same device. Think of rooms as profiles but for the same person. You can have different rooms based on what you do and arrange them with things for only that purpose. Maybe change the wallpaper to something related to set the mood. This is something I've been looking for in other DEs, but never found.
- ryanschneider 3y ago
  I was just thinking the other day I’d also really like that for my terminal history, especially since I’ve often worked at “bring your own device” sized companies.
  - EscapeFromNY 3y ago
    You might be interested in https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin > Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, and records additional context for your commands.
    - joshSzep 3y ago
      Atuin is outstanding. I've barely scratched the surface of its features, but it's already made a significant impact on my command line usage.
    - mmgutz 3y ago
      This is why I read HN comments. Some hidden gem always surfaces. Never seen this mentioned on any CLI awesome lists.
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      There's also McFly which is similar. I have yet to try Atuin so I can't say which is better.
  - dllthomas 3y ago
    I've been doing that for a decade+ now and it's marvelous. I key everything off a shell variable called SESSION, and have a few scripts to set that before spinning up a screen/tmux instance if I don't already have one running for the context in question. There's a somewhat dated snapshot of some of my config files (relevant and otherwise) at https://github.com/dlthomas/config-files https://github.com/dlthomas/config-files
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
What is the point of these projects? I really don't get it. It's a portable DE people can download on whatever computer they're on to have consistency? But then, how often are people away from their preferred computers, and when they use other computers would they let them just install/run random software?
- deleted 3y ago
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- pipeline_peak 3y ago
  There is no point, the only use case is what you’ve mentioned. The problem is this can’t run programs people actually use, so it’s just a pretty, useless user shell. It would make more sense to use some sort of in browser rdp, vnc, etc. Then you can run a real opereting system.
n3v3r3v3r 3y ago
This is a wonderful project! I've been thinking a lot about making such a unified desktop stack for a while now; web technology has matured to the point where I think it's feasible to build a complete environment a la Smalltalk/Symbolics but with a modern feature set. Obviously this has deficiencies but like it or not the web _is_ computing for the vast majority of people and exploring/pushing its limits of user experience is something few at all seem interested in. Projects like Arc[1] and suckless[2] approach browsers in novel (albeit divergent) ways, but as a whole it seems to be a very unexplored problem space. The idea of an Engelbart[3] style system built for the modern hypermedia-capable platform is an intoxicating one that desperately needs more attention. [1]: https://thebrowser.company/ https://thebrowser.company/ [2]: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/ with https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ and https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ [3]: https://archive.org/details/motherofalldemos_reel1 https://archive.org/details/motherofalldemos_reel1
- p4bl0 3y ago
  > I've been thinking a lot about making such a unified desktop stack for a while now; web technology has matured to the point where I think it's feasible to build a complete environment a la Smalltalk/Symbolics but with a modern feature set. Kind of a Chrome OS but not so tied with the Google ecosystem?
  - rektide 3y ago
    No. Chrome is just an app. One that happens to host the most amazing living/alive medium mankind has created. The page is all you need. A web site can be a canvas where everything can come together. And it can pull in other sites and capabilities. We do need some new APIs for the web platform to flourish fully. Some small local host services might fill in. Or yes we could indeed enhance the browser. But the idea is that it's the page not the browser creating the experience. The page is the hypermedium.
    - codedokode 3y ago
      Honestly, web platform is an ugly example of bad engineering, lot of legacy, weird choices, lots of privacy leaks, dangerous crossdomain requests enabled by default, etc. Instead of adding new APIs it would be better to freeze it and design a better platform.
wkat4242 3y ago
Looks cool though I think most regular users will be confused by the double panels. I wonder what makes it web based? I thought it would run in the browser but apparently not.
asoneth 3y ago
> Grid-styled menus and icon-focused, color-coded items are easy to find and remember. Reminds me a little of radial menus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu). They don't handle dynamic context menu contents well but they're amazingly efficient. > Interacting is even faster since Kera Desktop features “press and hold, move and release” gestured menus. Saved you a click! Note that you can also use right-click menus this way on macOS and GNOME. That is, you mouse down, drag your cursor to the item, and mouse up to select it. The only downside is that if you regularly use Windows it's annoying to unlearn this behavior.
- mutlucany 3y ago
  Just like having a headphone jack is a feature now. Still, combining it with a grid style menu makes it even more efficient.
- mbreese 3y ago
  > Note that this is how right-click menus operate on macOS Huh? That's not how mine work. Is there a setting for this that I forgot about? Mine are right-mouse-click (external mouse or trackpad), cursor to item, and then right or left click to select. You can keep your right button clicked, but it's not necessary.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    It's not necessary, but you can right-click, hold, move, release instead of right-click, release, move, left-click.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    Odd, it does work that way for me! If I move the cursor over a file in Finder, hold right click, move to the context menu option I want, and release the right mouse button, it triggers the action. In windows the release doesn’t do anything, the right click action just toggles the menu open/not open, so you left click the context menu option after it opens.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
gangstead 3y ago
I'm trying to understand this, is it kind of like an open source Chrome OS? It seems to give you that Chromebook like experience on your own machine.
laeri 3y ago
Congratulation on your launch. I haven't tried it out yet but it seems polished and huge respect for working for so long on a project!
cyberax 3y ago
I _love_ how it looks. It's pretty much what I want from a desktop: a simple window manager with a drawer on the right. Now, if only it supported managing native windows...
zvmaz 3y ago
What does "web-based" mean? Does it run in a browser? As a standalone application? Is it because it is written in Javascript?... Genuinely curious.
- juunpp 3y ago
  Wasn't very clear to me either. It looks like this is based on Linux but the entire desktop environment runs on html/css/js, i.e., a web browser runs the show. While the idea of a desktop written in a RAD/high-level language seems enticing to me, I'd be curious to see some benchmarks on memory use and general latency first. It does seem more fun to program against than GTK or KDE...
aidenn0 3y ago
Is there a way to use menus other than "press and hold, move and release"? "click and drag" is consistently one of the harder things for people to accomplish correctly.
- maphew 3y ago
  Would be awesome if the menu can be bound to numpad. Press center key to pop-up, then whatever key around that to select and activate.
penguin_booze 3y ago
> Kera Desktop is written in vanilla javascript Personally, I'd be wary of writing anything with a handful of functions in vanilla JS. Having done that multiple times (small projects, nevertheless), I remind myself to reach for Typescript these days.
samsquire 3y ago
I once bought a 32 core ThreadRipper and tried to get along with using a cheap £200 Windows 10 laptop to remote into the threadripper while in coffee shops and use the ThreadRipper to do my work. The £200 Windows 10 laptop wasn't powerful enough, it was too laggy. Even on Wifi. I love the idea of the X11 protocol. And I still love the idea of a web desktop. Something that is supremely well integrated and allows me to move workloads between client and server seamlessly. This idea I really like. The ability to outsource computation and storage seamlessly. A process can be moved between machines seamlessly. This could be modelled in Javascript and promises that can be sent around. Microservices in the desktop environment. I looked at tools that would bring up tmux sessions with everything preloaded. (https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator) ScrapScript has very good ideas in this area of distributing dependencies and storage. (https://scrapscript.org/ https://scrapscript.org/) There is also val town. I never use KDE Plasma widgets or the sidebar widgets that Mac provided. There is so many exciting ideas that could be tried out but I worry they're all too big ideas to be implemented.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >The £200 Windows 10 laptop wasn't powerful enough, it was too laggy. Even on Wifi. Any x86 computer in that price range is going to be hot garbage. You get what you pay for, and wifi has nothing to do with it.
  - mxuribe 3y ago
    I agree with you that a *NEW* machine at that price point running Windows will not be a great experience...but, I've purchased older, refurbished machines at that price point, and then loaded a lightweight linux distro and a lightweight desktop environment, and it works wonderfully! Of course, that's not for everyone i suppose.
- schoolornot 3y ago
  X11 and VNC are still too inefficient for today's internet cafes. Take a look at: https://kasmweb.com/kasmvnc https://kasmweb.com/kasmvnc
2h 3y ago
> desktop environment not really. you literally cannot create a file. if I want to create a text file, its not possible. and no, I dont mean a Google Doc or some crap.
- juunpp 3y ago
  I may not be understanding the concept either, but it does seem like the antithesis of a desktop to me. Half the stuff in that application menu is corporate spyware and SaaSS. Does that mean the desktop can mostly just interact with online services?
simonmysun 3y ago
I wonder if we could implement renderers of the X Window System core protocol or Wayland protocol in the browser. Is there any particular reason not to?
- zilti 3y ago
  Because it is stupid?
- lioeters 3y ago
  HTML5 Wayland compositor: https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield From a comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36263861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36263861
francois_h 3y ago
This is really cool. One day I’d like to see a JS based window manager running as the main window manager on a local machine. I’m not entirely sure how that would work. Imagine using a JS window manager instead of Windows explorer or MacOS’ finder or even replace KDE or Gnome.
- replete 3y ago
  I've been using obsidian for note taking recently and found myself writing all kinds of extended UI functionality just because I could do so easily with web technologies. Writing a bit of JS and CSS to make my primary operating system interface with exactly how I like would be pretty handy. Did the same thing with Firefox when I realized I could just write some css to make the UI more compact.
- rektide 3y ago
  Pyrodesktop & webOS are historic & contemporary examples, I albeit webOS isn't really a conventional window manager. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39541 I also cited Greenfield which is a web based Wayland window manager. Apps show up & run as normal in the browser. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239781
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  GNOME3 is already using GNOME Shell, which in return uses gjs and a CSS tree for all its components and layouts? I mean, the GTK layout tree is obviously different than a pure CSS layout tree, but it's been there for already 14+ years...and everyone was complaining about it. You can literally use animations and transitions from the CSS/SVG specification. You also can use "Looking Glass" which is their integrated debugger for layouts.
nunobrito 3y ago
This was fun. Really enjoyed the attention to connected home devices, that is really handy to have around as feature. Other things: Too much reliance on google-products. Around here (Europe) there are concerns about privacy and Google is avoided often. Search engines, please consider adding Qwant. My default browser is Brave, which is based on Chromium. Kind of too bad that Kera is not reusing the browser instances used by default on disk (when compatible) because they already my login details ready over there. It would help for easier transitions.
bionhoward 3y ago
So many links in that nice little nav bar, except GitHub. Who is your audience if not devs? Where’s the docs? I bounced on the site on mobile. Maybe it’s better on the desktop version. Could the devs of this please add a big “docs” button, code examples, GitHub link etc?
- schemescape 3y ago
  (Not affiliated with this project) Just to address the GitHub comment: there's a link to the source on GitLab (fox icon).
ivan_gammel 3y ago
>icon-focused, color-coded items Sounds like an accessibility and discoverability problem. Icons can be eventually learned, but only for frequently used items and only if user discovers the function. Colors… good UI does not require accessibility settings, it just works for any user.
poopsmithe 3y ago
What problem does software this solve?
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
A Web-based desktop pretty much sums up why technology today is terrible. I assume they have a browser that runs in the browser, and that they'll add browser APIs to make it easier to do browser-in-browser. Maybe then implement a minimal desktop environment in the browser-in-browser browser, and then add another API...
- jzombie 3y ago
  Well if you don't like it you can make your own project and fix technology today if that's your thing.
- FireInsight 3y ago
  A GTK-based desktop pretty much sums up why technology today is terrible. I assume they have GTK applications that run in the DE, and that they have GTK APIs to make it easier. Maybe then implement a minimal desktop in the GTK app, and then add another api... But in more serious terms: Web-tech while not being made for applications has gotten pretty good at it (why do you think so many new things are just webapps nowadays or atleast under the surface with something like Electron or React Native). It's just another abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of an abstraction... There's nothing inherently terrible about it.
ksec 3y ago
Here [1] is the link to FAQ, which answer 95% of my questions. Highlight below. ( I was thinking if it was a DE based on WebGPU and Canvas ) >What is Kera Desktop based on? Mostly web technologies. Kera Desktop is written in vanilla javascript and does not rely on third-party frameworks but uses some independent libraries. >Why is it based on web technologies? Easy to support different OS. Everyone's OS of choice might be different. Sometimes it can't be a choice because you're forced to use an app that isn't available on the platform you like. Moreover, you might be using several devices with different OS. Thanks to Kera Desktop being cross-platform and its sync function, you will always have the same interface with your stuff regardless of OS. Better integration with web apps. More and more things are already being done on the web. But things are stuck on a browser window. Kera Desktop brings more integration to the web apps with the desktop. When both worlds speak the same language, it will be easier for developers to work. Web apps can draw their windows on Kera Desktop. This alone literally removes a significant border between desktop and web app. [1] https://gitlab.com/kerahq/Kera-Desktop#frequenty-asked-questions https://gitlab.com/kerahq/Kera-Desktop#frequenty-asked-quest...
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orph 3y ago
I built something similar to this 16 years ago based on Firefox: http://web.archive.org/web/20080905102046/http://www.pyrodesktop.org/Main_Page http://web.archive.org/web/20080905102046/http://www.pyrodes...
- promiseofbeans 3y ago
  Woah, this is pretty cool. The page is also the only occurrence I've seen of the term 'Web 3.0' on something this old (abeit meaning something slightly different).
osigurdson 3y ago
Does it have a terminal app? For some reason I couldn't find it even though I'm certain it would have this.
atkailash 3y ago
[dead]
infogulch 3y ago
Cool project I've been looking for something like this. This is built on chromium, I wonder if it would be faster if it was built on servo...
nologic01 3y ago
Not sure what is the main use case but it does look great.
maliker 3y ago
I'm intrigued by the idea of using web browsers to experiment with new computer interfaces. Because everything we do with a computer can be done decently well inside a browser (e.g. see ChromeOS), any prototype can quickly be used day-to-day for all computer activities, which means I'm more likely to test thoroughly. Another big advantage is it's very easy to make a raw electron app that will work on any operating system and just start experimenting with UI features. It wouldn't be super fast or resource efficient, but you could do a lot with it. My pet idea for a new interface would be to turn away from apps and windows and have everything display to the user as a file. A browser tab would show up as a .url in the filesystem and you could interact with it as a usual web page inside the file interface. It would be a strongly spatial interface, i.e. the given tab would always live in the same spot in the folder alongside .txt, .pdf, etc. There are some apps out there that try to keep the spatial layout of windows (e.g. https://funk-isoft.com/display-maid.html https://funk-isoft.com/display-maid.html) but it seems to me that just forcing the file and window interfaces to be the same thing would do this better. Have I implemented it the above idea? Nope. A decent prototype would probably only take a week, but the thought of maintaining such an important part of my computer as the first and maybe only user seems pretty daunting. So kudos to the Kera dev for getting to work and getting it out there into the world!

343 points by mutlucany 3y ago

mutlucany 3y ago

Kera Desktop presents an new look and feel to your desktop workflow regardless of what OS you're using.

deleted 3y ago

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distortedsignal 3y ago

I think these types of projects are super cool, and being someone who was BORN IN THE 1980s, I really like the Desktop Analogy. Is there somewhere that I can look at several of these web-based desktop environments at the same time? Is there a good list of open-source web-based desktops that anyone knows of?

syx 3y ago
As a matter of fact there is [1] I'm personally curating it and check up on the links weekly. [1] https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops
- distortedsignal 3y ago
  Delightful. Thank you!

ruined 3y ago

i missed this at first glance: the download page does have a "chrome app" option at the bottom https://desktop.kerahq.com/download/ https://desktop.kerahq.com/download/ https://gitlab.com/kerahq/releases/-/raw/main/Kera%20Desktop/Kera-Desktop-Chrome.zip https://gitlab.com/kerahq/releases/-/raw/main/Kera%20Desktop... edit: looks like this can't run on a Mac

dreadlordbone 3y ago
"Old" Chrome Apps were disabled, it doesn't run on any new versions of Chrome.
- mutlucany 3y ago
  Until the latest update, it was possible to run it anyway. Very bad timing.
replete 3y ago
It worked for me, I unzipped the crx and dragged into chromium on latest macos

syx 3y ago

The design is very neatly done especially when the docks disappear and you place an app into full screen mode. I really like the concept overall, this looks like a cool side project!

chrisweekly 3y ago

Well done! Thanks for sharing!

anderspitman 3y ago

What does cross platform mean in this context? It appears to be Linux only to me.

deleted 3y ago
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schemescape 3y ago
The download page shows options for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Edit: and for Chrome (as a plug-in? I couldn’t tell). It looks like there is a separate download for an OS that is based on Linux. Is that what you saw?
- anderspitman 3y ago
  I only looked at the main page and FAQ and only saw references to Linux. I'll have to dig into this later. Very curious how it works on Windows.

gnull 3y ago

> It is easy to get distracted when you do many different things on the same device. Think of rooms as profiles but for the same person. You can have different rooms based on what you do and arrange them with things for only that purpose. Maybe change the wallpaper to something related to set the mood. This is something I've been looking for in other DEs, but never found.

ryanschneider 3y ago
I was just thinking the other day I’d also really like that for my terminal history, especially since I’ve often worked at “bring your own device” sized companies.
- EscapeFromNY 3y ago
  You might be interested in https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://github.com/ellie/atuin > Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, and records additional context for your commands.
  - joshSzep 3y ago
    Atuin is outstanding. I've barely scratched the surface of its features, but it's already made a significant impact on my command line usage.
  - mmgutz 3y ago
    This is why I read HN comments. Some hidden gem always surfaces. Never seen this mentioned on any CLI awesome lists.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    There's also McFly which is similar. I have yet to try Atuin so I can't say which is better.
- dllthomas 3y ago
  I've been doing that for a decade+ now and it's marvelous. I key everything off a shell variable called SESSION, and have a few scripts to set that before spinning up a screen/tmux instance if I don't already have one running for the context in question. There's a somewhat dated snapshot of some of my config files (relevant and otherwise) at https://github.com/dlthomas/config-files https://github.com/dlthomas/config-files

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

What is the point of these projects? I really don't get it. It's a portable DE people can download on whatever computer they're on to have consistency? But then, how often are people away from their preferred computers, and when they use other computers would they let them just install/run random software?

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pipeline_peak 3y ago
There is no point, the only use case is what you’ve mentioned. The problem is this can’t run programs people actually use, so it’s just a pretty, useless user shell. It would make more sense to use some sort of in browser rdp, vnc, etc. Then you can run a real opereting system.

n3v3r3v3r 3y ago

This is a wonderful project! I've been thinking a lot about making such a unified desktop stack for a while now; web technology has matured to the point where I think it's feasible to build a complete environment a la Smalltalk/Symbolics but with a modern feature set. Obviously this has deficiencies but like it or not the web _is_ computing for the vast majority of people and exploring/pushing its limits of user experience is something few at all seem interested in. Projects like Arc[1] and suckless[2] approach browsers in novel (albeit divergent) ways, but as a whole it seems to be a very unexplored problem space. The idea of an Engelbart[3] style system built for the modern hypermedia-capable platform is an intoxicating one that desperately needs more attention. [1]: https://thebrowser.company/ https://thebrowser.company/ [2]: https://surf.suckless.org/ https://surf.suckless.org/ with https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ and https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ [3]: https://archive.org/details/motherofalldemos_reel1 https://archive.org/details/motherofalldemos_reel1

p4bl0 3y ago
> I've been thinking a lot about making such a unified desktop stack for a while now; web technology has matured to the point where I think it's feasible to build a complete environment a la Smalltalk/Symbolics but with a modern feature set. Kind of a Chrome OS but not so tied with the Google ecosystem?
- rektide 3y ago
  No. Chrome is just an app. One that happens to host the most amazing living/alive medium mankind has created. The page is all you need. A web site can be a canvas where everything can come together. And it can pull in other sites and capabilities. We do need some new APIs for the web platform to flourish fully. Some small local host services might fill in. Or yes we could indeed enhance the browser. But the idea is that it's the page not the browser creating the experience. The page is the hypermedium.
  - codedokode 3y ago
    Honestly, web platform is an ugly example of bad engineering, lot of legacy, weird choices, lots of privacy leaks, dangerous crossdomain requests enabled by default, etc. Instead of adding new APIs it would be better to freeze it and design a better platform.

wkat4242 3y ago

Looks cool though I think most regular users will be confused by the double panels. I wonder what makes it web based? I thought it would run in the browser but apparently not.

asoneth 3y ago

> Grid-styled menus and icon-focused, color-coded items are easy to find and remember. Reminds me a little of radial menus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu). They don't handle dynamic context menu contents well but they're amazingly efficient. > Interacting is even faster since Kera Desktop features “press and hold, move and release” gestured menus. Saved you a click! Note that you can also use right-click menus this way on macOS and GNOME. That is, you mouse down, drag your cursor to the item, and mouse up to select it. The only downside is that if you regularly use Windows it's annoying to unlearn this behavior.

mutlucany 3y ago
Just like having a headphone jack is a feature now. Still, combining it with a grid style menu makes it even more efficient.
mbreese 3y ago
> Note that this is how right-click menus operate on macOS Huh? That's not how mine work. Is there a setting for this that I forgot about? Mine are right-mouse-click (external mouse or trackpad), cursor to item, and then right or left click to select. You can keep your right button clicked, but it's not necessary.
- michaelmior 3y ago
  It's not necessary, but you can right-click, hold, move, release instead of right-click, release, move, left-click.
- graypegg 3y ago
  Odd, it does work that way for me! If I move the cursor over a file in Finder, hold right click, move to the context menu option I want, and release the right mouse button, it triggers the action. In windows the release doesn’t do anything, the right click action just toggles the menu open/not open, so you left click the context menu option after it opens.
- carlosjobim 3y ago

gangstead 3y ago

I'm trying to understand this, is it kind of like an open source Chrome OS? It seems to give you that Chromebook like experience on your own machine.

laeri 3y ago

Congratulation on your launch. I haven't tried it out yet but it seems polished and huge respect for working for so long on a project!

cyberax 3y ago

I _love_ how it looks. It's pretty much what I want from a desktop: a simple window manager with a drawer on the right. Now, if only it supported managing native windows...

zvmaz 3y ago

What does "web-based" mean? Does it run in a browser? As a standalone application? Is it because it is written in Javascript?... Genuinely curious.

juunpp 3y ago
Wasn't very clear to me either. It looks like this is based on Linux but the entire desktop environment runs on html/css/js, i.e., a web browser runs the show. While the idea of a desktop written in a RAD/high-level language seems enticing to me, I'd be curious to see some benchmarks on memory use and general latency first. It does seem more fun to program against than GTK or KDE...

aidenn0 3y ago

Is there a way to use menus other than "press and hold, move and release"? "click and drag" is consistently one of the harder things for people to accomplish correctly.

maphew 3y ago
Would be awesome if the menu can be bound to numpad. Press center key to pop-up, then whatever key around that to select and activate.

penguin_booze 3y ago

> Kera Desktop is written in vanilla javascript Personally, I'd be wary of writing anything with a handful of functions in vanilla JS. Having done that multiple times (small projects, nevertheless), I remind myself to reach for Typescript these days.

samsquire 3y ago

I once bought a 32 core ThreadRipper and tried to get along with using a cheap £200 Windows 10 laptop to remote into the threadripper while in coffee shops and use the ThreadRipper to do my work. The £200 Windows 10 laptop wasn't powerful enough, it was too laggy. Even on Wifi. I love the idea of the X11 protocol. And I still love the idea of a web desktop. Something that is supremely well integrated and allows me to move workloads between client and server seamlessly. This idea I really like. The ability to outsource computation and storage seamlessly. A process can be moved between machines seamlessly. This could be modelled in Javascript and promises that can be sent around. Microservices in the desktop environment. I looked at tools that would bring up tmux sessions with everything preloaded. (https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator https://github.com/tmuxinator/tmuxinator) ScrapScript has very good ideas in this area of distributing dependencies and storage. (https://scrapscript.org/ https://scrapscript.org/) There is also val town. I never use KDE Plasma widgets or the sidebar widgets that Mac provided. There is so many exciting ideas that could be tried out but I worry they're all too big ideas to be implemented.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>The £200 Windows 10 laptop wasn't powerful enough, it was too laggy. Even on Wifi. Any x86 computer in that price range is going to be hot garbage. You get what you pay for, and wifi has nothing to do with it.
- mxuribe 3y ago
  I agree with you that a *NEW* machine at that price point running Windows will not be a great experience...but, I've purchased older, refurbished machines at that price point, and then loaded a lightweight linux distro and a lightweight desktop environment, and it works wonderfully! Of course, that's not for everyone i suppose.
schoolornot 3y ago
X11 and VNC are still too inefficient for today's internet cafes. Take a look at: https://kasmweb.com/kasmvnc https://kasmweb.com/kasmvnc

2h 3y ago

> desktop environment not really. you literally cannot create a file. if I want to create a text file, its not possible. and no, I dont mean a Google Doc or some crap.

juunpp 3y ago
I may not be understanding the concept either, but it does seem like the antithesis of a desktop to me. Half the stuff in that application menu is corporate spyware and SaaSS. Does that mean the desktop can mostly just interact with online services?

simonmysun 3y ago

I wonder if we could implement renderers of the X Window System core protocol or Wayland protocol in the browser. Is there any particular reason not to?

zilti 3y ago
Because it is stupid?
lioeters 3y ago
HTML5 Wayland compositor: https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield From a comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36263861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36263861

francois_h 3y ago

This is really cool. One day I’d like to see a JS based window manager running as the main window manager on a local machine. I’m not entirely sure how that would work. Imagine using a JS window manager instead of Windows explorer or MacOS’ finder or even replace KDE or Gnome.

replete 3y ago
I've been using obsidian for note taking recently and found myself writing all kinds of extended UI functionality just because I could do so easily with web technologies. Writing a bit of JS and CSS to make my primary operating system interface with exactly how I like would be pretty handy. Did the same thing with Firefox when I realized I could just write some css to make the UI more compact.
rektide 3y ago
Pyrodesktop & webOS are historic & contemporary examples, I albeit webOS isn't really a conventional window manager. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39541 I also cited Greenfield which is a web based Wayland window manager. Apps show up & run as normal in the browser. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29239781
cookiengineer 3y ago
GNOME3 is already using GNOME Shell, which in return uses gjs and a CSS tree for all its components and layouts? I mean, the GTK layout tree is obviously different than a pure CSS layout tree, but it's been there for already 14+ years...and everyone was complaining about it. You can literally use animations and transitions from the CSS/SVG specification. You also can use "Looking Glass" which is their integrated debugger for layouts.

nunobrito 3y ago

This was fun. Really enjoyed the attention to connected home devices, that is really handy to have around as feature. Other things: Too much reliance on google-products. Around here (Europe) there are concerns about privacy and Google is avoided often. Search engines, please consider adding Qwant. My default browser is Brave, which is based on Chromium. Kind of too bad that Kera is not reusing the browser instances used by default on disk (when compatible) because they already my login details ready over there. It would help for easier transitions.

bionhoward 3y ago

So many links in that nice little nav bar, except GitHub. Who is your audience if not devs? Where’s the docs? I bounced on the site on mobile. Maybe it’s better on the desktop version. Could the devs of this please add a big “docs” button, code examples, GitHub link etc?

schemescape 3y ago
(Not affiliated with this project) Just to address the GitHub comment: there's a link to the source on GitLab (fox icon).

ivan_gammel 3y ago

>icon-focused, color-coded items Sounds like an accessibility and discoverability problem. Icons can be eventually learned, but only for frequently used items and only if user discovers the function. Colors… good UI does not require accessibility settings, it just works for any user.

poopsmithe 3y ago

What problem does software this solve?

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

A Web-based desktop pretty much sums up why technology today is terrible. I assume they have a browser that runs in the browser, and that they'll add browser APIs to make it easier to do browser-in-browser. Maybe then implement a minimal desktop environment in the browser-in-browser browser, and then add another API...

jzombie 3y ago
Well if you don't like it you can make your own project and fix technology today if that's your thing.
FireInsight 3y ago
A GTK-based desktop pretty much sums up why technology today is terrible. I assume they have GTK applications that run in the DE, and that they have GTK APIs to make it easier. Maybe then implement a minimal desktop in the GTK app, and then add another api... But in more serious terms: Web-tech while not being made for applications has gotten pretty good at it (why do you think so many new things are just webapps nowadays or atleast under the surface with something like Electron or React Native). It's just another abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of an abstraction... There's nothing inherently terrible about it.

ksec 3y ago

Here [1] is the link to FAQ, which answer 95% of my questions. Highlight below. ( I was thinking if it was a DE based on WebGPU and Canvas ) >What is Kera Desktop based on? Mostly web technologies. Kera Desktop is written in vanilla javascript and does not rely on third-party frameworks but uses some independent libraries. >Why is it based on web technologies? Easy to support different OS. Everyone's OS of choice might be different. Sometimes it can't be a choice because you're forced to use an app that isn't available on the platform you like. Moreover, you might be using several devices with different OS. Thanks to Kera Desktop being cross-platform and its sync function, you will always have the same interface with your stuff regardless of OS. Better integration with web apps. More and more things are already being done on the web. But things are stuck on a browser window. Kera Desktop brings more integration to the web apps with the desktop. When both worlds speak the same language, it will be easier for developers to work. Web apps can draw their windows on Kera Desktop. This alone literally removes a significant border between desktop and web app. [1] https://gitlab.com/kerahq/Kera-Desktop#frequenty-asked-questions https://gitlab.com/kerahq/Kera-Desktop#frequenty-asked-quest...

deleted 3y ago

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orph 3y ago

I built something similar to this 16 years ago based on Firefox: http://web.archive.org/web/20080905102046/http://www.pyrodesktop.org/Main_Page http://web.archive.org/web/20080905102046/http://www.pyrodes...

promiseofbeans 3y ago
Woah, this is pretty cool. The page is also the only occurrence I've seen of the term 'Web 3.0' on something this old (abeit meaning something slightly different).

osigurdson 3y ago

Does it have a terminal app? For some reason I couldn't find it even though I'm certain it would have this.

atkailash 3y ago

[dead]

infogulch 3y ago

Cool project I've been looking for something like this. This is built on chromium, I wonder if it would be faster if it was built on servo...

nologic01 3y ago

Not sure what is the main use case but it does look great.

maliker 3y ago

I'm intrigued by the idea of using web browsers to experiment with new computer interfaces. Because everything we do with a computer can be done decently well inside a browser (e.g. see ChromeOS), any prototype can quickly be used day-to-day for all computer activities, which means I'm more likely to test thoroughly. Another big advantage is it's very easy to make a raw electron app that will work on any operating system and just start experimenting with UI features. It wouldn't be super fast or resource efficient, but you could do a lot with it. My pet idea for a new interface would be to turn away from apps and windows and have everything display to the user as a file. A browser tab would show up as a .url in the filesystem and you could interact with it as a usual web page inside the file interface. It would be a strongly spatial interface, i.e. the given tab would always live in the same spot in the folder alongside .txt, .pdf, etc. There are some apps out there that try to keep the spatial layout of windows (e.g. https://funk-isoft.com/display-maid.html https://funk-isoft.com/display-maid.html) but it seems to me that just forcing the file and window interfaces to be the same thing would do this better. Have I implemented it the above idea? Nope. A decent prototype would probably only take a week, but the thought of maintaining such an important part of my computer as the first and maybe only user seems pretty daunting. So kudos to the Kera dev for getting to work and getting it out there into the world!