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Re:Os.js – open-source JavaScript web desktop platform with ... by gspencley on Friday August 25, 2023 @09:00AM (#37261197)
The use case is a return to "dumb terminals." Many "Enterprises" already go as far as they can with remote desktop and VPNs but lots of enterprises would love to issue an employee a device that runs the entire OS remotely so that the device effectively becomes just a terminal and 100% of employee generated data stays within the origination's servers and networks. I'm not saying that this makes for a good employee experience, but it's a use case.
Re:Os.js – open-source JavaScript web desktop platform with ... by jeremyjh on Friday August 25, 2023 @10:05AM (#37261881)
So does this sync all the machine state to the cloud? I thought they mostly used local storage.
Re:Os.js – open-source JavaScript web desktop platform with ... by gspencley on Friday August 25, 2023 @10:28AM (#37262122)
I don't know about Os.js, specifically, but yes if you were going to implement a browser based OS for the purpose I described then local state would be relatively transient and state would be persisted on the enterprise side. There's no reason you need to use something like localStorage or indexedDb for anything, really. The only thing that buys you are performance and offline capabilities. But if security / keeping data "in the enterprise" is the priority then you can minimize what gets persisted locally.
Re:Os.js – open-source JavaScript web desktop platform with ... by jeremyjh on Friday August 25, 2023 @02:10PM (#37265126)
My point was simply that no one is doing that. That isn't what these are for, and an enterprise that wants to provide a thin client desktop can't use anything that doesn't run the applications the business already uses, so they are going to be deploying an actual windows desktop hosted in the cloud using any of the many solutions available from tier 1 cloud provides or others to do that.
Re:Os.js – open-source JavaScript web desktop platform with ... by andyjohnson0 on Friday August 25, 2023 @10:24AM (#37262085)
Back in the day we called them X Terminals. I had to work on one once and it was a pretty poor developer experience.