Today the eyeOS Project Team has officially released the first version of a MiniServer application that allows the eyeOS Web Desktop Environment 0.8.8 to be installed locally on an MS Windows machine with a very simple installation process. This will later help to expand the efforts in making eyeOS a complete intranet solution.
They have come a long way with this little project its looking real good.
I set it up on my server at home. Makes my broadband connection all that much more useful! Nice to be able to move files back and forth among its other features.
Is it an alternative to LTSP and thin clients? It wasn’t clear, or maybe it is just me, when you would use it.
Is this something like the situation: you have a few old Windows machines, you want to update their apps, and don’t want to take them to LTSP for some reason, so you put up a server with eyeOS on it, and give them access to the apps through the web browser?
Its not quite clear why you wouldn’t go to thin clients in that case, but probably there is a reason.
Edited 2006-01-25 21:20
The main advantage of eyeOS is that it provides a desktop platform (ie, server-based OS) which, once set up for access to the web, for example, can be accessed from *any* modern (ie, at the level of Firefox or IE) web-connected browser (as opposed to a dedicated thin client).
One difference in the result is that apps are not run on the eyeOS host, but instead on the client machine (at least to the degree that the components of AJAX (Javascript, DHTML, CSS) and in some eyeOS cases, JAVA Applets are run on clients.)
One disadvantage of this accessibility is that the *programs* which are run on the desktop more or less have to be coded in web-enabled format – ie: AJAX or Java applets, etc.
So for instance, OpenOffice or GIMP cannot simply be installed on the server and then streamed to the client – either *web format* office, image editing, and other applications in existence must be incorporated into eyeOS with author permission, or each desired program must be *coded by the eyeOS developers themselves*!
Note I have merely tested this app; feel free to correct any errors.
For what it’s worth, eyeOS is very cool – particularly in the gee-whiz department. Eye-candy and usability stand out. The real question is how app development shapes up, IMHO.
Edited 2006-01-26 11:47