4 ms·

hello, koding dev there. "koding.com's vm service" provides a standard real terminal. what are your expectations? asking to make it better.

by fka 13y ago

Nursie 13y ago
I think he meant (and I initially assumed from the headline) effectively bash in the browser, running locally.
- fka 13y ago
  you're right, but local bash in the browser is technically not possible for now. (if you don't hack or bridge the chrome). It can be an emulator or a connector like the secure-shell app by Google in Chrome store. Terminal app provides a free and full terminal with Koding VM.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    ChromeOS has something, but I have a feeling that's the browser acting as a window manager and running the terminal from its underlying Linux OS. I do wonder what might be achievable with PNaCl... Not saying what you've done ain't cool! Just wasn't quite what I expected from the headline :)
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      For whatever it is worth, I found ChromeOS's to be trash. I used it for a weekend on my Pixel and found it very unpleasant to use. If your environment isn't restricted such that a terminal in browser is really your only option, I don't know why you would do it that way. I don't see the use.
      - Nursie 13y ago
        The one that's normally available (crosh) is pretty awful, yes. The dev-mode shell available by typing "shell" in crosh is more normal. All I really want it for is ssh anyway. If anything more hardcore is needed it gets rebooted into Ubuntu mode. Haven't actually laid eyes on the pixel yet, I have a Samung ARM chromebook and I love it. Is the pixel worth the cash? And have you loaded an alternate OS yet?
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other things would get them instead of whatever I was running in the terminal emulator). I also was not very impressed with the weird cursor fading thing it does. Right now I'm running Debian Wheezy on my Pixel with a recent kernel that I built myself (the 3.0.whatever kernel Wheezy is on right now doesn't have touchpad support for the Pixel). The Pixel is only worth the cash if you have very specific use cases. First off, I don't consider it worth the price with ChromeOS at all, so you've got to put a regular distro on it. ChromeOS might be tolerable with cheaper hardware, but for what I paid for the Pixel I just can't stomach it. The hardware itself is underpowered (i5, little ram, runs hot as all hell if you start running a long build or something (seriously, I've burnt myself.)) and has very little storage, so your usage pattern should be lightweight (I've used tiling window managers instead of fancy DEs for years so that is a-okay for me.) The screen is absolutely fantastic; best thing I have ever seen, and the real reason I bought it. The screen is so good that, despite the downsides I've listed, I am very pleased with my purchase. In short: Upsides: Fantastic screen. Linus uses one, so shit works. Solid build quality. Downsides: Expensive, underpowered, can get hot as all fuck. I think Google missed the mark with the Pixel. It makes a nice tech-demo for the screen and their ability to make things out of aluminum, but it isn't something I could recommend to anyone with 'normal' usage patterns. Don't buy one unless you absolutely know a high DPI screen is what you want, and know that the specs will accommodate you.
        ufmace 13y ago
        Interesting, I was thinking about getting one for browsing/webapp use and remote development over ssh. In addition to the screen, I also like that ChromeOS sounds like it handles OS updates much better than anything else - free, seamless, automatic OS updates for life apparently. Better than Windows 8 trying to turn the computer into a giant tablet or OS X creeping further towards being a giant iOS device. Or linux distro updates breaking things (at least that's been my experience with linux). And all have a lot of overhead as far as installation time.
        13y ago
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - krishnasrinivas 13y ago
      ChromeOS is able to show terminal in the browser because the feature is built into the browser. i.e terminal extension (crosh extension) on ChromeOS has special privileges to access the underlying system. if you want to dig deeper (grep for terminal_private_api here): http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=git/chromium.git;a=commitdiff;h=41f4db3834561a8118bd83e41cee840b27f98489 http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=git/chromium.git;a=commitd...
  - comex 13y ago
    It's certainly possible to run a GNU userland on top of NaCl, though it would be highly nontrivial.
    - fka 13y ago
      i already told that it's possible but "connecting to local terminal from chrome" is not that possible. maybe you can do it over local SSH connection.
      - riskable 13y ago
        Well, if you're using Chrome on Linux you can just run Gate One (https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne) on your desktop and connect to https://localhost/ https://localhost/. That'll let you access SSH or whatever terminal program you like. I use it every day! (full disclosure: I wrote Gate One =D )
        fka 13y ago
        > (if you don't hack or bridge the chrome) i already said that. can you serve Gate One as Chrome Extension? No.
  - Theriac25 13y ago
    > local bash in the browser is technically not possible for now. Yes it is, and I've seen it. It was posted to HN a while (like about a year or two) ago, and could run emacs etc. It was done by emulating x86 in Javascript and then running Linux on the emulator.
    - wetmore 13y ago
      You are probably referring to the work of Fabrice Bellard? http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/
      - Theriac25 13y ago
        Yes I am, thank you for the link!
      - fka 13y ago
        This is an emulator. Not a real one. This 'looks like a terminal'
  - krishnasrinivas 13y ago
    local bash in the browser technically is possible without any hacks. You need to write an NPAPI browser plugin to do forkpty() and the browser-javascript can access the pseudo terminal through the NPAPI plugin.

hello, koding dev there. "koding.com's vm service" provides a standard real terminal. what are your expectations? asking to make it better.

by fka 13y ago

hello, koding dev there. "koding.com's vm service" provides a standard real terminal. what are your expectations? asking to make it better.

Nursie 13y ago

I think he meant (and I initially assumed from the headline) effectively bash in the browser, running locally.

fka 13y ago
you're right, but local bash in the browser is technically not possible for now. (if you don't hack or bridge the chrome). It can be an emulator or a connector like the secure-shell app by Google in Chrome store. Terminal app provides a free and full terminal with Koding VM.
- Nursie 13y ago
  ChromeOS has something, but I have a feeling that's the browser acting as a window manager and running the terminal from its underlying Linux OS. I do wonder what might be achievable with PNaCl... Not saying what you've done ain't cool! Just wasn't quite what I expected from the headline :)
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    For whatever it is worth, I found ChromeOS's to be trash. I used it for a weekend on my Pixel and found it very unpleasant to use. If your environment isn't restricted such that a terminal in browser is really your only option, I don't know why you would do it that way. I don't see the use.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      The one that's normally available (crosh) is pretty awful, yes. The dev-mode shell available by typing "shell" in crosh is more normal. All I really want it for is ssh anyway. If anything more hardcore is needed it gets rebooted into Ubuntu mode. Haven't actually laid eyes on the pixel yet, I have a Samung ARM chromebook and I love it. Is the pixel worth the cash? And have you loaded an alternate OS yet?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Oh, I mean I wasn't impressed with the terminal emulator itself. At least when I tried it, it seemed to have problems with some ctrl-sequences (as in, other things would get them instead of whatever I was running in the terminal emulator). I also was not very impressed with the weird cursor fading thing it does. Right now I'm running Debian Wheezy on my Pixel with a recent kernel that I built myself (the 3.0.whatever kernel Wheezy is on right now doesn't have touchpad support for the Pixel). The Pixel is only worth the cash if you have very specific use cases. First off, I don't consider it worth the price with ChromeOS at all, so you've got to put a regular distro on it. ChromeOS might be tolerable with cheaper hardware, but for what I paid for the Pixel I just can't stomach it. The hardware itself is underpowered (i5, little ram, runs hot as all hell if you start running a long build or something (seriously, I've burnt myself.)) and has very little storage, so your usage pattern should be lightweight (I've used tiling window managers instead of fancy DEs for years so that is a-okay for me.) The screen is absolutely fantastic; best thing I have ever seen, and the real reason I bought it. The screen is so good that, despite the downsides I've listed, I am very pleased with my purchase. In short: Upsides: Fantastic screen. Linus uses one, so shit works. Solid build quality. Downsides: Expensive, underpowered, can get hot as all fuck. I think Google missed the mark with the Pixel. It makes a nice tech-demo for the screen and their ability to make things out of aluminum, but it isn't something I could recommend to anyone with 'normal' usage patterns. Don't buy one unless you absolutely know a high DPI screen is what you want, and know that the specs will accommodate you.
        ufmace 13y ago
        Interesting, I was thinking about getting one for browsing/webapp use and remote development over ssh. In addition to the screen, I also like that ChromeOS sounds like it handles OS updates much better than anything else - free, seamless, automatic OS updates for life apparently. Better than Windows 8 trying to turn the computer into a giant tablet or OS X creeping further towards being a giant iOS device. Or linux distro updates breaking things (at least that's been my experience with linux). And all have a lot of overhead as far as installation time.
        13y ago
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - krishnasrinivas 13y ago
    ChromeOS is able to show terminal in the browser because the feature is built into the browser. i.e terminal extension (crosh extension) on ChromeOS has special privileges to access the underlying system. if you want to dig deeper (grep for terminal_private_api here): http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=git/chromium.git;a=commitdiff;h=41f4db3834561a8118bd83e41cee840b27f98489 http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=git/chromium.git;a=commitd...
- comex 13y ago
  It's certainly possible to run a GNU userland on top of NaCl, though it would be highly nontrivial.
  - fka 13y ago
    i already told that it's possible but "connecting to local terminal from chrome" is not that possible. maybe you can do it over local SSH connection.
    - riskable 13y ago
      Well, if you're using Chrome on Linux you can just run Gate One (https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne https://github.com/liftoff/GateOne) on your desktop and connect to https://localhost/ https://localhost/. That'll let you access SSH or whatever terminal program you like. I use it every day! (full disclosure: I wrote Gate One =D )
      - fka 13y ago
        > (if you don't hack or bridge the chrome) i already said that. can you serve Gate One as Chrome Extension? No.
- Theriac25 13y ago
  > local bash in the browser is technically not possible for now. Yes it is, and I've seen it. It was posted to HN a while (like about a year or two) ago, and could run emacs etc. It was done by emulating x86 in Javascript and then running Linux on the emulator.
  - wetmore 13y ago
    You are probably referring to the work of Fabrice Bellard? http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/
    - Theriac25 13y ago
      Yes I am, thank you for the link!
    - fka 13y ago
      This is an emulator. Not a real one. This 'looks like a terminal'
- krishnasrinivas 13y ago
  local bash in the browser technically is possible without any hacks. You need to write an NPAPI browser plugin to do forkpty() and the browser-javascript can access the pseudo terminal through the NPAPI plugin.