This is an insanely nice Windows UI clone. Not only is the site nicely done, but I enjoyed reading the author's posts regarding their current life and future aspirations. The whole bundle of code + UI + content hits home. I hope the author becomes the senior software engineer they desire to be - they deserve it.
I'm impressed/dissapointed that this is more responsive than my actual desktop environment...
There is a huge collection of similar web desktops here. https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops Only windows93 and windows96 are any good though.
https://www.windows93.net/ https://v3.windows93.xyz/ https://windows96.net/
Previous discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25241123 (149 points | Nov 28, 2020 | 43 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29779753 (194 points | Jan 3, 2022 | 126 comments)
There's a browser embedded, so you can open the same website in the browser and recurse
Another one for the https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops !
Found the GitHub repo: https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS
That is so cool!
Interesting note, Chrome now shows me how much memory each tab consumes. No matter what I did it is always stay on 50mb (which sounds like a bug in chrome), while a page from SO consumes 87mb and HN takes about 30mb.
Personally, I prefer Windows 93:
Wow immersive. After ~15 secs I mechanically tried moving windows with alt + click, but it moved my browser.
Oh how neat, the Messenger feature uses nostr (https://nostr.com) DMs!
It's kind of fitting he works at Microsoft when the desktop heavily feels like Windows. Dragging and dropping everything feels super satisfying. This must be the first native-style UI for the web that almost feels perfect (the only glitches I see is mouse-over an icon has the icon move slightly up, probably as borders are added changing their position ever so slightly. I'm sure it would be easy to fix.)
Impressive and smooth, however I can't help thinking it's an effort in an opposite direction. We should be striving away from the desktop metaphor, into something built for abstracting tens of thousands of files and folder, something that relieves working memory, that adheres to our brains' spatial recognition patterns rather than offering logical views into file systems.
if you're looking for more ancient greek pun operating system names, i made a list in https://dernocua.github.io/notes/greek-operating-systems.htm... which reads in part
> TalOS the gift of HefaistOS KholOS to MinOS, KokalOS who gave DaidalOS refuge in KamikOS from MinOS, PegasOS, OrfeOS, AisculapiOS, MinotaurOS, CetOS, AgriOS, EnkeladOS, HippolytOS, SisyphOS, NessOS the son of KentaurOS who slew Herakles the lover of IolaOS and slayer of AntaiOS
sadly theseus is θησεύς, ending in an actual υς rather than the ος of the above examples, so he isn't eligible to have an operating system named after him
Wow this website is buttery smooth even on my older machine. Even the speed test ran extremely fast.
The fact that it comes with Quake 3, playable and everything is amazing.
I've seen a lot of these and this one is one of these best
I need that winamp as an electron app (I use mac, it has nothing similar to winamp)
OK, found: https://github.com/durasj/webamp-desktop/releases/tag/v0.3.0
These things pop up here every once in a while. And they have existed since at least early 2000s, but I have never ever seen this kind of thing getting any more traction than "oh this looks cool", or seen or known anyone (software engineer or not) in real life that uses it. Not at all excited about this.
Really nice work. I could swear there was a similar websire posted here about 1-2 years ago, anyone remember the link?
If I open the sim's browser, then type in google.com, I will get a message from my firefox nightly with a security warning about embedding a site within a site. However i click on one of the sim's browser links to google, with some chars after, I can surf the web in the sim. Seems like a problem, no?
I am waiting to run our dinosaur b2b java swing app in wasm in the browser. It is an app that has multiple windows inside the main window with JInternalFrames, haha. Awesome. I hope clients will see that as an awesome feature in the browser, not they all want somehow b2b and instagram-like trendiness.
This reminds me of Berlin/Fresco.
https://berlin.sourceforge.net/
I followed this project for years and it's still where I think we should be. X11 architecture with higher level primitives
i just played doom for a solid 10 min, thanks for bringing back up good memories
Uau. Since many years that I am considering creating a DE based in html and do something like this.
The html + css approach is wonderful, easy to learn and thanks to arias and html standard amazing in terms of accessibility.
There's also https://www.windowmaker.org/
The website of a window manager impersonating the window manager.
It would be funny on each new version to list "sped up rendering by 2x!" in the change log.
And each time you just decrease the animation durations by half. :)
I love this so much. This reminds J2ME applications for phones which would “emulate” Windows XP and Vista back in the day - they could even play MP3 files!
Faster than my phone
This is beautiful work. I played Doom, launched vim and read a blog post in a tab that loaded faster than almost all modern web apps.
The website even saves the state between visits. E.g. move an icon some where, close the page, and come back. Really impressed by that.
Awesome Job! If possible, can you share a blog outlining the tech details of how to did this. Want to learn.
It's very snappy. I'm honestly impressed. (Snappier opening apps than a new M1 I briefly had)
I was being productive until I started playing DOOM and now my Macbook sounds like a jet engine.
Could be interesting for GTA6
I'm bot an security expert, but I think it needs a lot of hardening.
I love the feature that lets you edit blog posts like a Notepad file :D
How does it load so fast? It’s like black magic
This is literally the reason Ctrl Alt Del exists
I like how it's more capable than ios where you can't position app icons arbitrarily and need to use random filler to have them within reach.
apart of the fun of having those on the web, is anybody actually using them for something serious?
LOL holy shit this uses TinyMCE!? Good call!
Great animations.
(2020)
Hi Dustin, what are the latest improvements ?
I'm really thinking that's the feature.
Compile Linux kernel to wasm. So it can run inside a browser with a very nice performance.
Write FS drivers to enable seamless caching and remote data storage, so you can shutdown your system on PC and boot from laptop. Or even some kind of hibernate mode, so you can just continue from where you left off.
Write graphics drivers using WebGPU and other technologies, enabling very nice performance. May be not perfect for AAA games, but for anything less demanding it'll work.
So basically make a proper Linux port for browser and then reuse all the applications already built.
I do wonder what it would be like if we have a linux distro, where you can work seamlessly between a desktop PC and a laptop or a random cafe, because the desktop is essentally a web browser like this example.
Of course you could just say IPKVM or VNC, but I would say it's a bit different if you can run most of the logic client side (via webassembly etc...). So this would require the app to be rewritten to have a clearer separation between the view and controller... which is what most linux apps don't really do. So I think at this stage it's just a pipedream.
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These all just huge time waste, cpu energy waste, internet waste. Even I do find it's not compatabile to read the blog, author info.
What is the use like these works?
People like this are an instant hire for me at my company.
It’s quite sad that Microsoft apparently doesn’t think he’s worthy of the ‘senior’ title yet whilst his work is heaps better than most seniors I know. Kinda explains their poor software quality lately.
I’m super impressed by how smooth it is on mobile. Winamp is a nice touch.
Creator says it took three years on the side to build: https://www.reddit.com/r/react/s/JZRRdq1Qv3