Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

New Linux Desktop Environment Built on Firefox

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jul 22, 2007 08:15 AM
from the believe-it-when-it's-useful dept.
GUI Software X
IL-CSIXTY4 writes "'Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.' This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript." "
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

New Linux Desktop Environment Built on Firefox 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • slashdotted after the first comment (Score:4, Funny)

    by discord5 (798235) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:19AM (#19945357)

    Already slashdotted after the first comment, so ... this is what the future web-desktop will be like huh?

    • Re:slashdotted after the first comment (Score:5, Informative)

      by jkrise (535370) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:28AM (#19945397) Journal
      Already slashdotted after the first comment, so ... this is what the future web-desktop will be like huh?

      Not if the server is within the intranet. Here's the text from the site:

      What is Pyro?

      Flickr Add-on

      Exposé-alike

      Window Picker

      Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.

      By merging the Web with the desktop, Pyro offers the first big step toward a new future for the Web and the applications built for it.

      In Pyro, Web content is no longer confined to the browser's window. Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.

      Imagine...
      Rich Web pages running side-by-side with native applications
      Single programming environment for the whole desktop
      Desktop-wide mashups, killer Web integration
      Novel desktop effects

      Pyro enables a desktop that tracks the latest in Web technology, and helps mold the future of the integrated Web.
      [edit]
      NEWS

      From Ars Technica

      July, 20 2007:
      Pyro project offers Firefox-based desktop environment on Ars Technica, by Ryan Paul.
      Pyro delivers Web apps to the Linux desktop on DesktopLinux.com.

      Check out the slides!

      July, 18 2007:
      Pyro Announced during GUADEC '07 Conference Keynote Speech.
      [edit]
      How does Pyro work?

      Pyro works fundamentally by drawing your entire computer screen as a Web Page, all from within Firefox. Indeed, at the core Pyro is simply a window manager which renders Web content alongside existing native applications.

      By leveraging the trusted Firefox Add-On system, all the capabilities of dynamic HTML, JavaScript, CSS, SVG, and Adobe Flash are available to enable incredible applications, extensions and themes.

      Bringing all these Web technologies together with the newest generation of Linux display technology, called window compositing, allows Pyro to integrate native applications as an intrinsic part of the overall Web Desktop, seamlessly merging the two.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by smallfries (601545)
        Maybe I'm being naive, but how would this be different to running a separate browser window for each page, without any navigation controls. You know, like some really nasty site interfaces do before you navigate away from them really quickly...

        What is the point? Why does it need a separate window manager? Why on earth does the summary mention compositing when it doesn't appear in the article?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by paulatz (744216)
      Yes, it is slahdotted, but coral cache is working: pyrodesktop.org [nyud.net].

  • IE4 Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:21AM (#19945361)
    Didn't we learn our lesson with Active Desktop? This is one of the reasons I use Firefox instead of IE. It's not so tied into the OS that when it crashes, it's taking down other apps as well.

    • Re:IE4 Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by digitalaudiorock (1130835) on Sunday July 22 2007, @09:39AM (#19945813)

      Didn't we learn our lesson with Active Desktop?
      ...and why would anyone want this anyway? The only real reason MS did this sort of thing was to support their legal argument that IE was a necessary and integral part of the OS. This is just as bad as the awful practice of embedding other applications in the browser by default instead of launching the appropriate applications externally (konqueror for example). Why does everyone want to copy all the worst ideas MS has had for browser functionality?

  • If only... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jkrise (535370) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:22AM (#19945371) Journal
    the apps include a very simple word processor and a spreadsheet that could work from a server hosted within the company intranet... this would be a very useful project indeed. Basic features would do - no need for all that fancy schmancy stuff.

  • First read (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HangingChad (677530) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:34AM (#19945435) Homepage

    right alongside desktop apps (through compositing).

    At first I thought that said through composting. Guess you'd have to call that organic computing.

    On a serious note....Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.

    The "trust" issue would loom very large in that statement. Provides some interesting possibilities all the same.

    • As much as it makes me uneasy, potentially it's not that much less secure than downloading and running those random closed source shareware apps from download.com, and probably just as secure as providing your credit card info to a trusted site over the internet.

      But yeah... something about it scares me. Not sure what...
    • The "trust" issue would loom very large in that statement.

      Given FireFox's history of security issues, I would tend to agree.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Cheesey (70139)
      Instead, trusted Web sites and extensions are given access to the full range of interactivity and control enjoyed by native applications today.

      Yeah, I don't like the sound of this either. Seems like a two-level trust scheme: trusted websites have access to everything.

      One of the design flaws in present day GUIs (including all the X11-based GUIs for Linux) is that one malicious application can compromise the entire GUI if it can open a window. This is true even if you take the sensible step of running untrust
      • Present day is an amusing adjective to apply to X11.
        • I just included that so as to make it clear that this design flaw is not confined to Windows/OS X.
      • Agree with your comments.

        The whole thing sounds to me like running web applications as popups that are exactly like the locally run application windows, both in appearance and in all, or most, of the infrastructure behind them.

        I can't think of a better way to assist malicious web apps in fooling the user by removing any clue that they're not something local and innocuous.

        A phisher's dream.
  • Didn't we decide this was a bad idea when MS did it? They might not have done it as completely as pyro, but that just sounds like a bad idea.

    I can't of course RTFA at the moment due to the flames rolling out of the webserver it is on.
    • Didn't we decide this was a bad idea when MS did it?

      We? Mr. Gates is this you?

    • Didn't we decide this was a bad idea when MS did it?

      No, I think we decided that it was a bad idea because MS was doing it - and was using it as an excuse for locking Windows users into IE and its capacity for "embracing and extending" web standards.

      Actually, years before that we "decided" that web apps in general were a bad idea when Sun/Oracle touted their java-based thin client/Network Computer idea. I think that died, mainly, because the question was always "yes, but will it run Word for Windows and b

    • Actually, I think we decided it was a bad idea when we figured out that running an OS, then an window manager, then an application, then an (web)OS, then a (web)window manager, then the intended (web)application is horribly inefficient, and not one bit easier to program for. In fact, it's rather constricting.

      I think people are seeing how easy GUI is to do in HTML/XHTML and trying to take advantage of that, but in doing so are making it more complicated. It would be a lot smarter to make an add-on for an e
  • Wasn't this done with MS in Windows 98, the Active Desktop? See how well that worked? Why would anyone want this?

    • Re:Haven't we done this before? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aminorex (141494) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:57AM (#19945523) Homepage Journal
      On this interpretation, we should never use artificial intelligence because of Clippy.

    • Re:Haven't we done this before? (Score:5, Funny)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Sunday July 22 2007, @09:33AM (#19945769)
      Wasn't this done with MS in Windows 98, the Active Desktop? See how well that worked? Why would anyone want this?

      That was done in 1998. It was early Web 1.0, and people didn't dig web stuff so much. But now, it's different. There are plenty of uses for a web based desktop, and to quote their site:

      Internal Server Error

      The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

      Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@pyrodesktop.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

      More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

      Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

      I think Microsoft is totally shaking in their boots at the thought of Pyro: just consider, a connected, integrated, web desktop. It's just like .NET 3.0 except it's much slower, much less secure and runs on JavaScript. Complete winner!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gbjbaanb (229885)
      I don't know, but (the article is /.ted) but it sounds more like MS's HTAs - their web-as-a-desktop-app system. (HTA = Hypertext Application). They used IE as a client front end to a local (or remote) web application. It was hosted in IE but without titlebar, buttons etc. It also ran in an increased security environment (as you'd expect a desktop app to interact with the filesystem, for example, that normal web apps hosted in a 'normal' browser would not get acess to).

      It semed like a good idea, and enabled

  • Symphony OS Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asphaltjesus (978804) on Sunday July 22 2007, @09:01AM (#19945547)
    This guy is probably doing something similar. Symphony OS.

    http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/sc reenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=Symphony %20OS%202006-12%20Beta [thecodingstudio.com]

  • In order to head off claims that this environment would be useless if network connections were down, I should point out, that in modern business and private settings, having no network is almost as bad. In other words, being dependent on the network is probably not a liability.
  • Huh? What's this? For Linux users who wish they were running Windows?
  • Didn't Microsoft try this with XP and IE??

    Look what happened to them..

    I will believe it when I see it.
  • So, Active Desktop is making a comeback, is it?
  • Until Firefox can solve some of the many, many bugs still present in it's product, I think that this entire discussion is silly.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by misleb (129952)
      The bugs in Firefox are not nearly as significant as the shortcomings of XUL. XUL is definitly better for programming "rich" applications than HTML, but once you start using it you realize that the Mozilla team only developed XUL just enough to get the browser up and running. Last time I used XUL there were big parts that just didn't get any attention. And even if all the widgets did function as they were meant to, they'd still be a more limiting than common desktop toolkits. And then there's Javascript, wh
  • This just sounds like its follwing Microsoft's trend of adding even more layers of middleware to suck down all our CPU time and resources just to do the simplest of tasks.

  • User interactivity? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by macraig (621737) <mark,a,craig&gmail,com> on Sunday July 22 2007, @11:49AM (#19946655) Homepage
    Given that Firefox already has issues with ignoring user input at various times, I guess Pyro will also bring that ability to ignore the user to the Linux desktop, as it has existed in Windows since the beginning?

  • Use the hammer! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brandybuck (704397) on Sunday July 22 2007, @06:06PM (#19949537) Homepage Journal
    Use the hammer! When you need to insert a screw use a hammer to bash it in! When you need to saw some wood, use a hammer to break it apart! When you need a pair of tweezers to carefully manipulate a tiny electronic part, use a hammer to bash it into smithereens!

    When you're so tunnel blind that all you can see is the web, then everything starts looking like a web page.

    • Re:Somehow familliar (Score:4, Interesting)

      by haakondahl (893488) on Sunday July 22 2007, @08:41AM (#19945459)

      This strangely reminds me of Microsofts Desktop in Windows 95/98 and the resulting law suits. I am no programmer, but wouldn't the performance of a desktop system written to support java script etc. be lower than that of a regular written desktop? So, in the worst case it would slow down the whole system.
      Regarding speed, I don't think it's an issue.

      First, all computers wait at the same speed, and presumably the point here is to accomplish something heavily dependent on the network. Even the best network (in my experience) winds up being the limiting factor.

      Second, the applications are not likely to depend on the speed of the processor for much, in the user's experience. Now obviously, if we're using bloated software like Word to accomplish what notepad could do, we'll feel the hit. On the other hand, I'm consistently frustrated by the sloth of OO apps. So if FIrefox offers an equally slow solution that is better integrated, I say it's a winner.

      Of course, I haven't RTFA, as it is FSD'ed.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by suv4x4 (956391)
        First, all computers wait at the same speed, and presumably the point here is to accomplish something heavily dependent on the network. Even the best network (in my experience) winds up being the limiting factor.

        "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not"
        Winnie The Pooh

        Modern computers don't make everything "wait" for something to happen. They multitask. Even modern browsers (Opera, IE, Safari) multitask. Firefox doesn't.

        For Firefox, loading of several files over the network is a
          • This isn't where we are now, it's where we're all going; see the MS, Adobe, lazlo and JavaFx frameworks for the proof.

            Here's a clue [mozillazine.org]

            This is not where we're going. With multi-core processors on the table.

            I've read the article in your "clue". For me, this clue just shows the Firefox team is clueless, and that's why I've given up any hope on it.

            Lazlo is just a failed open-source version of Flex-like framework. They open-sourced it since they couldn't sell it.

            Microsoft .NET and JavaFX are full-blown languages w
            • Lazlo is just a failed open-source version of Flex-like framework. They open-sourced it since they couldn't sell it.

              You are, of course, aware that Adobe is open sourcing Flex, also?

              Anyway, I like Flex.

              Joe.

    • oh great ... that's all we need, a bunch of pyro-mainiacs.

      See, you've already melted their server ... didn't anyone teach you not to play with fire?

          • It's the amalgamation of two (old) jokes:

            There are only three sorts of mathematicians [sometimes people], those who can count, and those who can't.
            And:

            There are 10 sorts of people, those who understand binary, and those who don't.
            And, yes, combining them does make you sound like someone who's heard the second and incorrectly remembered it.

          • Re:Does this mean... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ShieldW0lf (601553) on Sunday July 22 2007, @12:05PM (#19946771) Journal
            Didn't everyone agree a long time ago that integrating IE into the OS and using it as a shell was a bad idea?

            So what is it that makes this any different?

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by Kalriath (849904)
                No, it ran as the currently logged in user. The problem is that Windows insists during setup that the user create an administrator account for everyday use. It's the same scenario. (Well, minus the horrible ActiveX crap - noone really likes that)
    • To really "know" your favorite languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript) is quite rare. Lots of us can get some minor thing half-way working on one browser. Writing solid code is not at all a trivial task; very few people can manage. Not even Google always gets it right.

      While I've seen some very buggy and unportable C code, fixing one platform doesn't tend to break all the others as is the case with the web stuff.

            • But just using the standart gui (gnome-control-center) I should not be able to mess up my configuration - If I am then gnome-control-center has not sufficently protected me.

              First, spelling check. It's "standard", with a d.

              Second, are you absolutely sure there's no way it could have messed up unless it was gnome-control-center? Really? For example: bad RAM, bad disk, etc could all be at fault here. I'm not saying it couldn't possibly be gnome-control-center, but understand that it can't possibly protect yo

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.