Many, many years ago, I remember saying, “Someday, you wouldn’t install and run programs, you would run all your applications from your web browser. Much to my delight, when Google released their Docs suite, I was very pleased. However, with cloud computing coming-on strong, remote computing is going much further than a few apps running in your browsers.
In fact, here’s something I would never have dreamed of, an entire Linux OS running in a browser:
Javascript PC Emulator
The following browsers are officially supported:
- Firefox 4.x
- Chrome 11
- Opera 11.11
- Internet Explorer 9
For optimal performance, your browser should support the W3C Typed Arrays.
Here’s how you can copy data to the Virtual Machine:
- Copy your file content to the OS clipboard using your favorite text editor.
- Paste the data to the JS/Linux clipboard using the mouse (it is the text area on the right of the VM terminal).
- In the VM Linux shell do:
cat < /dev/clipboard > /tmp/myfile
Your text file is now copied to /tmp/myfile.
To copy binary data, you can uuencode it on the PC using (assuming you use Linux):
uuencode myfile myfile > myfile.txt
Then you copy myfile.txt to the Linux VM and uudecode it by doing:
uudecode < /dev/clipboard
Now, this is how you copy your data from the Virtual Machine:
The procedure is the reverse of the previous one:
- Copy your file to the clipboard:
cat myfile > /dev/clipboard
- Select all the clipboard data and copy it to the host OS clipboard using the mouse over the text area on the right of the VM terminal.
- Paste the data in your favorite text editor
For binary files, you can uuencode in the VM and uudecode on the host.
You can learn how to add network support, emulate a VGA card, or add all the missing devices to launch FeeDOS or Windows on the Javascript PC Emulator FAQ page.
Or, you can jump right in and start using the Javascript PC Emulator.
Sure, it’s not like running an OS on your local machine. It’s only an emulator; however, can you seeing this expand? Right now, we are limited by bandwidth, etc … In the past, compression and hardware technology have given us more bandwidth. More bandwidth (or compression) = more data, the higher the chance of being able to run a completely virtual machine, apps, programs, files … everything!
Imagine have a netbook type device, or low-cost generic machines, that runs all of our “stuff.” A portal. A gateway.
Will we see the end of the importance of having a large local hard drive, RAM, and so on?
Jonathan Gardner says
Probably years away, if ever. High compression files, require a LOT of processing power, RAM, and hard drive space (for temp storage), and that’s not even for real-time usage. Running an internet-based OS would require a (prohibitively expensive) large amount of system resources.
Eric Dye says
… today. 😉
Jonathan Gardner says
Moore’s Law aside, I doubt we will ever see a complete change over to internet-based OS’s. No matter how fast a network is, it is still affected by weather conditions, traffic loads, and a wide variety of other potential issues. Furthermore, while people may be fine with storing their MP3s in “the cloud”, I doubt people will ever start storing financial or other personal documents off of their own physical drives. The best security is still in a non-networked computer, or one in which the physical drives are behind your side of the firewall. Network speed is another issue which would have to be overcome, as real-time usage of an internet-based OS would likely require high-end fiber connections, which while some corporations might go for it, for their internet-and-word-processor-only employees, anything more than that would take way too much bandwidth, not considering how fast software sizes are getting larger and larger.
Eric Dye says
🙂
Josh Wagner says
As far as content creation, I think it would be profitable for you to have personal physical storage. You don’t want a connection issue to come between you and your deadlines. Or, have a random server farm failure lose your data at the very wrong moment.
As far as extended storage goes, it’s all moving to the cloud. Worries are still the same (connection issues and hardware failures), but I guess you personally have the same issues.
I do remember saying I’d never stop buying CDs when iTunes came out, and I’ve not bought a CD in years. So, anything is possible.
Eric Dye says
That’s exactly what I was saying. You can’t make predictions solely based on current tech.
Thanks for the share!