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DaedalOS – Desktop environment in the browser
- bmacho 3y agoWow immersive. After ~15 secs I mechanically tried moving windows with alt + click, but it moved my browser.
- octacat 3y agoI need that winamp as an electron app (I use mac, it has nothing similar to winamp) OK, found: https://github.com/durasj/webamp-desktop/releases/tag/v0.3.0 https://github.com/durasj/webamp-desktop/releases/tag/v0.3.0
- ametrau 3y agoHow does it load so fast? It’s like black magic
- coxley 3y agoI’m super impressed by how smooth it is on mobile. Winamp is a nice touch. Creator says it took three years on the side to build: https://www.reddit.com/r/react/s/JZRRdq1Qv3 https://www.reddit.com/r/react/s/JZRRdq1Qv3
- hannofcart 3y agoI was thinking the same. Am viewing this on a Retina MBP screen, so that might be influencing what am feeling, but this looks much better than I ever remember Windows XP being.
- accrual 3y agoThis is an insanely nice Windows UI clone. Not only is the site nicely done, but I enjoyed reading the author's posts regarding their current life and future aspirations. The whole bundle of code + UI + content hits home. I hope the author becomes the senior software engineer they desire to be - they deserve it.
- byteflip 3y agoThis gave me a good chuckle. Obviously titles mean different things at different places but my god my accomplishments as a "Senior Software Engineer" title pales in comparison to what Dustin has built here. Kudos to him and it inspires me to shoot for more.
- Uptrenda 3y agoI feel the same way. This is like a combination of art, philosophy, and software engineering. It's a whole ecosystem and possibly a new platform. Really interesting to think about this.
- seydor 3y agoFaster than my phone
- kristopolous 3y agoI've seen a lot of these and this one is one of these best
- t_mann 3y agoReally nice work. I could swear there was a similar websire posted here about 1-2 years ago, anyone remember the link?
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoAnother one for the https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops !
- noduerme 3y agoLOL holy shit this uses TinyMCE!? Good call!
- mofosyne 3y agoI do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example. Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a clearer separation between the view and controller... which is what most linux apps don't really do. So I think at this stage it's just a pipedream.
- Etheryte 3y agoSo something like X11?
- mofosyne 3y agoYes somewhat, but if I understand X11 is closer to a 'thin client' where X11 only handles drawing and moving windows on the display and interacting with a mouse, keyboard or touchscreen. This is opposite to how most a typical web browser experience works, which much of the logic happening on the client side (e.g. UI elements)
- pgeorgi 3y agoSo something like NeWS
- DonHopkins 3y agoExactly, like I've been saying for years! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38830583 That would be a huge leap backwards. Something more like NeWS would make much more sense, since you have a scripting language in the browser that solves the terrible design flaws of X11 and Wayland. We've come so far in the direction of NeWS by adding another layer, the web browser. Why add another third layer to move back in the opposite direction, when you could REMOVE X-Windows or Wayland and just have the browser that you need in the first place, running directly on the hardware, without the useless obsolete layer underneath. I've written about this frequently and extensively (also extensibly), over more than 10 years on HN, and a lot longer than that elsewhere. But some people seem to have a mental block against understanding what the obvious advantages and efficiencies are, just don't get it, and never will, but actually want to move backwards towards X-Windows again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710127
- enoch2090 3y agoThere's a browser embedded, so you can open the same website in the browser and recurse
- orliesaurus 3y agoI love the feature that lets you edit blog posts like a Notepad file :D
- asicsp 3y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25241123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25241123 (149 points | Nov 28, 2020 | 43 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29779753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29779753 (194 points | Jan 3, 2022 | 126 comments)
- Uptrenda 3y agoIt's kind of fitting he works at Microsoft when the desktop heavily feels like Windows. Dragging and dropping everything feels super satisfying. This must be the first native-style UI for the web that almost feels perfect (the only glitches I see is mouse-over an icon has the icon move slightly up, probably as borders are added changing their position ever so slightly. I'm sure it would be easy to fix.)
- Gabrys1 3y agoMaybe that was expected actually
- paradite 3y agoFound the GitHub repo: https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS
- anonymousd3vil 3y agoThank you for sharing this here! Looking for it.
- yonisto 3y agoThat is so cool! Interesting note, Chrome now shows me how much memory each tab consumes. No matter what I did it is always stay on 50mb (which sounds like a bug in chrome), while a page from SO consumes 87mb and HN takes about 30mb.
- rchaud 3y agoThe site is smooth, but it causes the fans on my laptop to start spinning. I closed the tab and the fans stopped. I'm on a 2014 MBP w/8GB RAM running Firefox, but it is still plenty fast for other React websites. I wonder if it's the animated wallpaper that's causing the fans to fire up.
- lulzury 3y agoWow this website is buttery smooth even on my older machine. Even the speed test ran extremely fast.
- rplnt 3y agoI like how it's more capable than ios where you can't position app icons arbitrarily and need to use random filler to have them within reach.
- Gabrys1 3y agoIt's very snappy. I'm honestly impressed. (Snappier opening apps than a new M1 I briefly had)
- mkarliner 3y agoThis reminds me of Berlin/Fresco. https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ https://berlin.sourceforge.net/ I followed this project for years and it's still where I think we should be. X11 architecture with higher level primitives
- DonHopkins 3y agoYou know there's a very good reason that failed, as did every one of the numerous projects named X12 and Y-Windows, and why Wayland has taken so many years to continue to fail or even displace X-Windows. None of them are dynamically extensible at runtime the way the browser is with JavaScript, or Emacs is with Lisp, or NeWS was with PostScript (which failed for economic reasons). Why not simply use a standards based web browser running directly on the hardware to implement the desktop user interface and window manager and network distributed app platform (i.e. Electron), instead of trying and failing to reinvent X-Windows for the 100th time?
- kragen 3y agoi thought news failed because sun blundered the licensing and kept people from adopting it, not because it was too expensive to run (though it was kind of expensive to run, i don't think that's what killed it; i remember xnews being pretty usable even on a sparc ipc) speaking of expensive to run, electron struggles to run an app in less than 4 gibibytes of ram, and it's impossible to get things to be reliably responsive in it. and the 'standards based' platform has the kind of sandboxing you need to safely run third-party apps, but it eats its children, like the pgp message format: you only get one level of sandboxing, no sandboxes inside sandboxes, so things implemented on the 'standard' platform can't actually use the sandboxing to confine apps android surfaceflinger seems to have done a pretty thorough job of displacing x-windows in that surfaceflinger installs outnumber x-windows installs by about 100:1
- topaztee 3y agoi just played doom for a solid 10 min, thanks for bringing back up good memories
- swiftcoder 3y agoI'm impressed/dissapointed that this is more responsive than my actual desktop environment...
- zootboy 3y agoPersonally, I prefer Windows 93: http://www.windows93.net/ http://www.windows93.net/
- asystole 3y agoI see your windows 93 and raise you a https://windows96.net/ https://windows96.net/
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoFaster and snappier than Windows 11. This is a reminder of a time when Microsoft had all A grade players.
- SubiculumCode 3y agoIf I open the sim's browser, then type in google.com, I will get a message from my firefox nightly with a security warning about embedding a site within a site. However i click on one of the sim's browser links to google, with some chars after, I can surf the web in the sim. Seems like a problem, no?
- arcza 3y agoThis is literally the reason Ctrl Alt Del exists
- vbezhenar 3y agoI'm really thinking that's the feature. Compile Linux kernel to wasm. So it can run inside a browser with a very nice performance. Write FS drivers to enable seamless caching and remote data storage, so you can shutdown your system on PC and boot from laptop. Or even some kind of hibernate mode, so you can just continue from where you left off. Write graphics drivers using WebGPU and other technologies, enabling very nice performance. May be not perfect for AAA games, but for anything less demanding it'll work. So basically make a proper Linux port for browser and then reuse all the applications already built.
- wolletd 3y agoI'm looking forward to the day when I can run a browser in my browser.
- DonHopkins 3y agoThe point would be to run the browser directly on the hardware without any intervening useless layers like X-Windows or Wayland, then implement the desktop environment in that, and when you needed to pop up a browser window on the desktop (which you always need to do frequently), or an html app like you'd usually run in Electron, simply and efficiently use the same browser that's running the desktop environment, sandboxed the way all modern browsers now already implement their renderers isolated from their chrome ui frames. No need to run the user's browsers separately inside a slower layer of emulation, when you already have a browser implementing the desktop. Fewer layers and less bloaty software is better. We're already stuck with the browser, and it's not going away, so use it for everything. X-Windows and Wayland are obsolete and useless, so should be flushed.
- mkopec 3y agoI think ChromeOS Freon was close to what you're describing, but they ended up switching to Wayland at some point
- DonHopkins 3y ago
- szundi 3y agoI am waiting to run our dinosaur b2b java swing app in wasm in the browser. It is an app that has multiple windows inside the main window with JInternalFrames, haha. Awesome. I hope clients will see that as an awesome feature in the browser, not they all want somehow b2b and instagram-like trendiness.
- tofflos 3y agoAre you using cheerpj and if so how is that working for you?
- wscourge 3y agoGreat animations.
- ulrischa 3y agoI'm bot an security expert, but I think it needs a lot of hardening.
- forgotpwd16 3y agoHarden what? It's essentially a fancy static site.
- ulrischa 3y agoI thought it is a wasm virtual machine?
- lonk 3y agoSimilar: https://simone.computer https://simone.computer More: https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops
- HeckFeck 3y agoThere's also https://www.windowmaker.org/ https://www.windowmaker.org/ The website of a window manager impersonating the window manager.
- ehecatl42 3y agoI don't mean to be boring, but Emacs has had a window manager for years, EXWM. Oh, and a browser, EWW. If you want Inception-level recursion, a virtual LISP machine is your friend.
- pixelbeat__ 3y agoReminds me of my website from 2006 (not entirely reproduced) at https://web.archive.org/web/20060208131821/http://www.pixelbeat.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060208131821/http://www.pixelb...
- andirk 3y agoI was being productive until I started playing DOOM and now my Macbook sounds like a jet engine.
- harshjoeyit 3y agoAwesome Job! If possible, can you share a blog outlining the tech details of how to did this. Want to learn.
- w4rh4wk5 3y agoThe fact that it comes with Quake 3, playable and everything is amazing.
- neonsunset 3y agoI love this so much. This reminds J2ME applications for phones which would “emulate” Windows XP and Vista back in the day - they could even play MP3 files!
- d3w4s9 3y agoThese things pop up here every once in a while. And they have existed since at least early 2000s, but I have never ever seen this kind of thing getting any more traction than "oh this looks cool", or seen or known anyone (software engineer or not) in real life that uses it. Not at all excited about this.
- hulitu 3y agoThey are a nightmare from an UI and a security perspective. Your browser is today the main entry point for a remote exploit. And although your monitor has pixels and a phyisical dimension, and sometimes, scalling, they are hidden from your browser apps ensuing a total mess.
- Uptrenda 3y agoThe website even saves the state between visits. E.g. move an icon some where, close the page, and come back. Really impressed by that.
- asystole 3y agoOh how neat, the Messenger feature uses nostr (https://nostr.com https://nostr.com) DMs!
- smusamashah 3y agoThere is a huge collection of similar web desktops here. https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops Only windows93 and windows96 are any good though. https://www.windows93.net/ https://www.windows93.net/ https://v3.windows93.xyz/ https://v3.windows93.xyz/ https://windows96.net/ https://windows96.net/
- sixlelyt321 3y agoThese all just huge time waste, cpu energy waste, internet waste. Even I do find it's not compatabile to read the blog, author info. What is the use like these works?
- rpigab 3y agoE pur si muove
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago(2020)
- weejewel 3y agoPeople like this are an instant hire for me at my company. It’s quite sad that Microsoft apparently doesn’t think he’s worthy of the ‘senior’ title yet whilst his work is heaps better than most seniors I know. Kinda explains their poor software quality lately.
- s-xyz 3y agoCould be interesting for GTA6
- baudaux 3y agoHi Dustin, what are the latest improvements ?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- o-o- 3y agoImpressive and smooth, however I can't help thinking it's an effort in an opposite direction. We should be striving away from the desktop metaphor, into something built for abstracting tens of thousands of files and folder, something that relieves working memory, that adheres to our brains' spatial recognition patterns rather than offering logical views into file systems.
- joloooo 3y agoI agree, and am eager to see what comes with the next wave of OS. I think this was just nostalgic fun.
- abunner 3y agoThis is beautiful work. I played Doom, launched vim and read a blog post in a tab that loaded faster than almost all modern web apps.
- kragen 3y agoif you're looking for more ancient greek pun operating system names, i made a list in https://dernocua.github.io/notes/greek-operating-systems.html https://dernocua.github.io/notes/greek-operating-systems.htm... which reads in part > TalOS the gift of HefaistOS KholOS to MinOS, KokalOS who gave DaidalOS refuge in KamikOS from MinOS, PegasOS, OrfeOS, AisculapiOS, MinotaurOS, CetOS, AgriOS, EnkeladOS, HippolytOS, SisyphOS, NessOS the son of KentaurOS who slew Herakles the lover of IolaOS and slayer of AntaiOS sadly theseus is θησεύς, ending in an actual υς rather than the ος of the above examples, so he isn't eligible to have an operating system named after him
- aurora72 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jancsika 3y agoIt would be funny on each new version to list "sped up rendering by 2x!" in the change log. And each time you just decrease the animation durations by half. :)
- tjoff 3y agoRelated, if you are on Android you can speed up (or slow down) animations in the developer options. I always speed them up by 2x, makes the ui feel snappier.
- qwertyuiop12 3y agoUau. Since many years that I am considering creating a DE based in html and do something like this. The html + css approach is wonderful, easy to learn and thanks to arias and html standard amazing in terms of accessibility.
- qkhhly 3y agoapart of the fun of having those on the web, is anybody actually using them for something serious?