Ubuntu / Linux as the "thin" OS of the future?

[chio]

On a long drive the other day, my mind wandered off the dull monotony of the M6 and onto, of all things, Ubuntu and the future of computing. Now, I apologise if I'm going over ground that's been covered a million times here, but I don't tend to follow the tech press all that closely!

The vast majority of my work is now done over the internet. The company email is a branded version of Gmail that I can access from anywhere, hundreds of megabytes of my work files are stored on a web storage service called Box.net, I collaborate with people on writing and various other endeavours through Google Apps. Desktop apps seem to be going out of fashion at my place of work, being replaced by the browser window. We're even using Meebo instead of the phone between different rooms!

Roll forward a little to the Steve Jobs keynote a few days back. He's standing there in that daft-looking black sweater harping on about all the improvements in his desktop Mac OS. Flashy finder windows, animations left, right and centre and I'm thinking -- why? I used Macs for over ten years, only switching to Ubuntu when my last one broke down and I couldn't find a spare £900 to replace it. It took a bit of getting used to the new way of doing things, but surely these days anything that can access a reasonably modern Firefox browser is perfectly capable of doing the majority of office tasks?

So my point is this: why spend loadsamoney on Windows Vista or a Mac only to switch it on, fire up a web browser and work on the same online apps as you can use with Ubuntu perfectly well for free? The simpler the OS on the actual computer, the more efficiently you can use your collaborative apps online. I reckon it's the future and at some point, people will realise they're barely using the desktop side of things.

What do you think?

:KS

[Tomosaur]

I think you're mostly correct, but right now people still do require a desktop system with actual software. People tend to use image manipulation software, listen to music, watch movies etc. I think the trend is definately towards internet-based computing (for everything), but I think we need a few new OS upgrades before we get to that stage.

[cunawarit]

That’s exactly what Google are counting on.

Why use a fully featured desktop still?

Because they are different things, a power user, or developer you probably never rely solely on online applications. There are certain tasks that you won’t be able to accomplish with just a browser. But I agree, in all likelihood the home/small-business computer of the future will simply run a web browser, and absolutely nothing else.

FWIW, Ubuntu/GNOME is as WAY overkill for this setup too as Mac OS X and Vista.

[lamalex]

i hate web apps, I never use them. I'm like my clients like I like my ladies thick and robust.

[PatrickMay16]

Web apps are always slow, and bloated, suck, look like crap, work like crap, etc. And many people don't want or need internet connections. This would make an internet connection important for everything, which is horrible. Your computer becomes useless whenever the network connection goes down. And privacy becomes a concern, too.

Just letting you know what I think.

[w2vy]

There are TWO very valid points here.

1) The majority of what most people (adults and kids) do *is* online
2) Once you step outside that you do need desktop apps

I have a fairly computer literate family (I would bet most in this forum do too).

I changed my pc to dual boot with the default being ubuntu.

I logged in, opened firefox and started counting the hours until I was asked what was going on.

After a day and a half I was casually asked if I had loaded a new firefox!

I explained it was a new o/s; Linux instead of Windows; the reply was "Oh, OK"

It was not until one of my sons wanted to play a windows game that I needed to show them how to switch back and forth.

I agree that ubuntu could use a couple of more releases before it is totally ready for the AOL kind of mass CD mailing and people auto-install.

To be honest from my experience it is not far from being 95% of that.
(Remember the last 10% takes 90% of the time...)

Tom

[brim4brim]

Web apps are always slow, and bloated, suck, look like crap, work like crap, etc. And many people don't want or need internet connections. This would make an internet connection important for everything, which is horrible. Your computer becomes useless whenever the network connection goes down. And privacy becomes a concern, too.

Just letting you know what I think.

I have to agree with this post.

This can't happen until computers are fast enough that web apps don't work slower than desktop apps do currently and until broadband is available everywhere. It would suck to bring your computer somewhere and end up carrying a brick around for the day because there is no Internet connection.

[qamelian]

Web apps are always slow, and bloated, suck, look like crap, work like crap, etc. And many people don't want or need internet connections. This would make an internet connection important for everything, which is horrible. Your computer becomes useless whenever the network connection goes down. And privacy becomes a concern, too.

Just letting you know what I think.

This is why I never use web apps except for the occasional time when they make collaborating on a project easier. Unless you can be guaranteed that you have an efficient, "always on" internet connection no matter where your travels take you, web apps
can never replace local apps and local data storage.

[chio]

I love the idea of those "webtops", but the ones I've tried have fallen short of my expectations. I think the people in charge of making them seem to be fixated on the idea that they have to closely resemble a Windows desktop, which isn't the right way to go in my book; it's not the most efficient way of doing it. I don't want or need to be able to drag Javascript windows around, just let me at my stuff!

From a so-called WebOS, all I want is a web-based office package like Google Apps, an email client that I can access quickly and a place to store and share my documents and audio. I want it to be quick and simple to access from a reasonably modern browser and look the same wherever I log on from. It makes me laugh when they include pointless tosh like a web browser in a browser-based OS! I guess we're some way off that ideal, though.

[cunawarit]

It would suck to bring your computer somewhere and end up carrying a brick around for the day because there is no Internet connection.

Part of the exercise is to make computing ubiquitous. You wouldn't need to log your computer around anywhere, the Internet would be the computer and the Internet would be everywhere.

We are certainly not there yet, not everywhere is connected... Not all connections are fast enough... There aren't seamless Internet available for you to use wherever you happen to be... But we will get there.

[EdThaSlayer]

If only they could find a way to save these apps in your cache and be able to acces those internet apps even when you don't have internet. I think they are working on something like that now, would make web apps look better. :)

[w2vy]

Web apps are good when used properly.

The best analogy I can think of is disk drives.

Floppy's
CD's
Hard drives

They each have their use;

I'd hate to load FireFox over the network (diskless) or to have no cache

Generally Extremes are not going to make everyone happy...

Maybe we need to think of this as a 'Thin OS' that can be fattened with desktop apps as the user needs?

tom