eyeOS – Portable Cloud Computing
eyeOS Screenshot
This morning, I was feeling adventurous and came across an open-source web suite called eyeOS. We’ve seen webmail in the form of Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! etc. where you can access email through your web browser. We’ve also seen web calendars, rss readers and a multitude of other systems move much of our systems away from desktop applications like Outlook Express.
eyeOS takes this one step further and becomes an entire desktop within itself. When you first log in, you’re presented with some desktop icons for calendars, contacts and a ‘home’ folder. (similar to the ‘Documents’ folder in Windows)
There is also a small apple-like dock at the top and a taskbar at the bottom showing open windows. From this dock, and the icons, separate applications like webmail, calendar etc can be opened. Also incorporated into eyeOS is a simple office suite containing a word processor and spreadsheet much like a full commercial OS like Windows.
Icons can be dragged around, as can windows, new icons can be created and applications can be installed within a few clicks. You can upload files into various places and download them later on.
In eyeOS’s own words:
“eyeOS is a new kind of Operating System, where everything resides on a web browser. With eyeOS, you will have your desktop, applications and files always with you, from your home, your college, your office or your neighbour’s house. Just open a web browser, connect to your eyeOS System and access your personal desktop and all your stuff just like you left it last time.”
So what’s so good about eyeOS?
eyeOS is trying to mimic most of the functionality of a windows or mac based machine, particularly the generic everyday software like mail, calendar, rss, and word processing. The reason it’s doing this is the most unique and important selling point: You can log in from another computer, anywhere in the world and all your files and desktop settings are sitting right in front of you.
Most businesses have a computer in the office, many also have a portable laptop for business meetings. When taking this laptop out, we currently have to transfer files, sync data and make sure everything’s working before we set off. With eyeOS, everything is already there. If your laptop is stolen, the information is stored online so a) you’ve not lost any data, and b) the thief doesn’t have access to your data.
eyeOS is also multi-user, every member of staff can have their own log in, their own workspace and you also get instant messaging and internal mail features to keep in touch through the system. It enables you to block access to certain users and remove access to files and data should someone leave the company, a potentially great feature for remote workers.
The future of computers
With software like eyeOS etc. computer processors, memory and disk space are becoming less and less important for the average user. Computer specifications will start to drop as will cost. Smaller laptops will start to become dumb terminals as all processing and the fun stuff is done by the eyeOS server.
High end PCs (and yes.. macs) will still be available, gamers will still need the hardware, as will graphic designers, CAD programmers and other users of more powerful software, but for general home/office computer use, heavy machinery could be a thing of the past.
I am starting an eyeOS trial run
eyeOS is available for free as a download, but you need to install it on a hosting server yourself. If you wish to use the system internally either for yourself or your business, our hosting packages support it and I will gladly set it up, run the hosting, give you and your staff an over-the-phone training session, offer telephone support for both hosting and system, and regular upgrades as they are released for £300 per year for 1-5 users. Depending on popularity, we withhold the right withdraw the offer at any time. This will not affect customers already using the system.
In other words, get the complete system with updates and weekday telephone support for the equivalent of just £25 per month.
eyeOS official home page (http://eyeos NULL.org/en/)
Try it for yourself – eyeOS Demo (http://demo NULL.eyeos NULL.org/?lang=en)
2 responses to "eyeOS – Portable Cloud Computing"
10:58 on December 8th, 2008
I won’t be as glad as you about eyeOS. You pretend that by the time, PC will become just a platform to connect your eyeOS session. Not sure at all ! eyeOS cannot run on free server because of PHP restriction. Do you really think people will rent a server to install eyeOS? Apps are a big security problem. Using a non-UNIX file system is a wrong way to make eyeOS used by more and more people. You cannot even sync your files on eyeOS. So what? I have a server that a rent expensive. I would like to use eyeOS and sync all my files. I have more than 20’000 files. Am I going to upload them one by one? I don’t say eyeOS is a bad idea. The code is clear, the soft is user friendly and functioning. But it style have to be worked on. I don’t seriously think that those kind we cannot even called Operating System (because of missing kernel) will be one day the future of computing.
11:10 on December 8th, 2008
Hi Selmak,
eyeOS runs quite happily on a shared server, I have an installation myself. As we’re using more and more software online, word processing, email, Content management, contact relationship management etc. the hard drive software is becoming less important.
Now I do agree that technically it isn’t an operating system, how will you access it without a local filesystem and browser, but it does mean true os’s may not need to be so important. A small solid-state hard disk could be all that’s needed.
A file sync is possible however not out-of-the-box. Using a simple database connection and FTP, something could be integrated quite easily. A web-based java ap could work wonders.
A unix based file system would do more harm than good online, you don’t want files to be accessed by anyone who can guess the directories and filenames in their browser.
Security is definitely an issue, there’s no denying that. If you can access it from anywhere then so can anyone else potentially. Perhaps linking it to a specific MAC address for basic login and ultra secure logins when using from other machines could work.
It doesn’t need to be expensive, and if all your employees are using cloud systems, the physical security problems with a portable laptop on planes, taxis, cars, cafe’s, homes etc becomes less important. The UK government would stop losing our personal data left right and centre on flash disks and so on.
Yes it’s in it’s infancy, but there is potential there to utilise the processing power of the internet as a whole rather than one machine.