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gOS Gadget Aims Ubuntu At Cloud Computing
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jan 08, 2009 02:20 PM
from the prettification-always-welcome dept.
from the prettification-always-welcome dept.
DeviceGuru writes "The gOS project has released version 3.1 of its Ubuntu-based Google-centric distribution. The release draws its packages from the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) repositories, but adds a bright green theme and a few alterations in default applications, but more importantly adorns its desktop with numerous gadgets based on the Mozilla Prism project along with an animated application-launch icon set based on the wbar project."
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
is a myth
This is very true. This whole cloud hype is not really a cloud. It will end up being a small number of very large datacenters that do everything. True cloud computing will be when every node on the internet shares it's cached data and is able to supply resources (processing cycles, hard drive space, etc.) to the rest of the nodes on the internet. While each node will not represent a significant portion of the resources nor will each necessarily be physically located close to each other it will provide a tr
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, cloud is basically botnet 2.0?
Re: (Score:1)
Also known as "thin clients" 2.0 (or whatever number that concept is up to). In some small scale situations, I think it works (classrooms, etc), but people demand speed and responsiveness, and honestly, bandwidth is not guaranteed.
The only thin client I use is Zimbra, but I can't imagine how long OO.o would take to load or make changes to a 50 page document on the cloud. I know some stuff is cached, but you can only cache so much.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Shit, I forgot to bitch about the fucking "cloud computing" bullshit.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who Gives a Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Who are you talking to? From your post, it sounds like you imagine there's one group of people who are constantly making new distributions and never finishing them, and we need to convince those people to stop doing that.
In reality, it's usually that a new group of people form around an idea of what they want out of Linux, which is a different idea than other available distributions. Since the other distributions already have a direction that isn't going to change, and this new group has no power to make existing distributions change, they start building their own version.
And really, there's no problem here. The freedom to come up with your own distribution or fork an application has been invaluable to Linux. Ubuntu (one of the most popular distributions today) was one of these "new" distributions just a few years ago.
Parent
Re:Who Gives a Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone makes a distro dedicated to killing puppies, but in the process comes up with a feature that's invaluable to everyone else, the other distros can easily take that feature and integrate it. The other distros don't have the change their direction, and the new puppy-mashing distro developers can work in an environment they're confortable with and with a purpose they feel strongly about, while still contributing to the community as a whole.
Parent
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
This is also one of its biggest disadvantages. The fact that there are tons of distros means that if someone wants to write a device driver, office suite, browser plugin, game, etc that targets Linux, they have to deal with a myriad possible configurations of library versions, desktop environments, themes, sound systems, etc. Most commercial developers decide it's not worth it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is also one of its biggest disadvantages. The fact that there are tons of distros means that if someone wants to write a device driver, office suite, browser plugin, game, etc that targets Linux, they have to deal with a myriad possible configurations of library versions, desktop environments, themes, sound systems, etc.
Nonsense, they don't have to deal with that, they can write the code and let the distros package it.
Most commercial developers decide it's not worth it.
Oh I see, you mean proprietary software developers decide it isn't worth it. You wouldn't really have meant commercial developers because that would include Red Hat, Sun, etc who write linux software.
Seriously, the whole linux thing is not centred around making things convenient for proprietary software developers. This seems to surprise a lot of people but I don't know why.
Re: (Score:2)
GNU vs Windows/Random Proprietary stuff is exactly the same as the difference between the free market and the old Soviet Command Economy. With GNU, individuals take the risk to create something they THINK other people will want. The market place kills off the ideas that don't work out as those distro creators thought they would. Vs large corporate CTO/CIO head geek type deciding what "cool" "hip" new features his army of business suit coders should work on. It's exactly why there are a million cool compiz e
Re: (Score:3)
2008 was about as "Year of the Linux Desktop" as it will ever get. Any companies persuaded by the extremely vocal linux minor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Any companies persuaded by the extremely vocal linux minority to support Desktop Linux will wake up and realize that the significant time and resources spent on developing for a non-standard platform whose demographic wants everything for free is a complete waste.
Desktop Linux users want everything free not for free
Re: (Score:2)
gOS has nothing to do with Google you fucking idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
RTFS
a whole distribution? (Score:2)
And they even made one with MySpace application instead of Google.
Do I need a third pc if I want to poke someone on Facebook?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes indeed. See also, UbuntuStudio, Mythbuntu, Crunchbang, gNewSense, etc.
Of course, you could say the same thing about Ubuntu with respect to Debian.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone tried it? (Score:2)
There's a liveCD so I'll download it and try it on my old Dell laptop, which I plan to update to openSuSE 11.1 (from 11.0) anyways.
Has anyone tried this yet, though? Does it actually work and "in seconds of turning your computer on" can you get online, while it loads another operating system in the background?
That sounds pretty cool, I have to say. It'd be really cool, too, if I put the liveCD onto a USB drive and boot from there, seems like that'd be even faster and cooler.
Anyways.. anyone tried the d
Re: (Score:2)
I tried it in Nov. 2007, and wrote this review [lightandmatter.com]. At that time, gOS was by far the worst part of the WalMart PC that came with gOS preinstalled. I don't know how much that's improved since then. Their site says this is the third revision of the OS. I did notice that in the new screenshots, they've fixed one annoying usability problem I encountered, which was that the three buttons to maximize, kill, and minimize a window all looked the same. One thing to watch out for is tha
Re: (Score:2)
Mmm, I meant specifically Cloud, not gOS. But thanks, it looks like people are mostly (except you, who actually did try gOS) going by the screenshots...
actually, it's... (Score:2)