Hi, On Jul 9, 8:43 am, BINNY THOMAS <[email protected]> wrote: > Well I hope this doesn't become a threat to Linux. Almost all of Google's > products that have been released have outdone their peers. Seriously do we > need another OS?[?]
Technically, this is not another conventional OS like Gnu/Linux or Windoz. They are just talking about web based application platform. Think of it like this - an OS made of just the kernel and a fullscreen browser (let us neglect the other essentials for the time being). There is no other GUI except the HTML render. All the applications are web/cloud based - a good example is the Google docs. All the heavy work and storage will be provided by server side app, while simple quick reaction tasks will be performed by the client (mostly AJAX). The idea is great, but cannot uproot our conventional OS. It will be great for work for Office (docs, spreadsheets, info management etc), multimedia playback (limited), scientific computing (limited), software dev, etc. However it wont be good for apps (atleast for the near future) that need massive net bandwidth, strong communication protocols, near zero latency and a lot of local processing power. Such apps include gaming, high quality media playback, high power simulations, software testing, multimedia editing, etc. Besides, it will be nearly dead if no net connection is there. And this is clearly not a new idea- it has its roots in the first browser wars. M$ was so scared about windoz loosing out to Netscape's browser based platform that they went all out to kill it. And because of that, the net platform idea remained dormant for another decade- and browsers remained just another app. Then Google took up charge- Chrome was a serious first step to that. Unlike all other browsers, Google wants web apps to behave just like a desktop app. Thats why it has features like app sandboxing, minimalist GUI and offline app caching. Take that minimalist GUI out of the way (which Chrome allows), and create a desktop shortcut -even techies will have difficulty in realizing that Google doc is a web app and not a desktop app! Now if you believe that this is bad, think again. Windoz and Linux will die anyway if they dont adapt to the new environment. There are 2 new challenges- web app infrastructure and multicore processing. I had to delay a project for 2 years because these new technology forces me to relearn software design all over (and I am not a CS engineer). Any App or OS that doesn't address these problems will die a natural death soon. Change is inevitable. Regards, Gokul Das --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For details visit the website: www.ilug-tvm.org or the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
