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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

I've always loved "desktop websites", but beyond novelty I haven't found a real use case. Maybe something like a thin client or "work anywhere" for a business?

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Synology DSM is a well executed example of a good "desktop website" use case. https://www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm

Would love a open source version of this for custom hardware. Sometimes I don't feel like using a shell for my local servers.

webmin is the closest thing I've found in the past, but would love to hear of newer options

Well, you can run their os on your hardware or in a virtual machine using https://xpenology.org/

DSM may not still be, but last time I looked it was built using Sencha ExtJS.

I'm not sure when the buyout happened, but a few years ago Sencha became the shadiest, nastiest organisation I've ever dealt with. I'm keen to see what Synology do / have done to displace it.

As someone who has to regulary switch OS for various reasons: I would love to have the same file explorer/desktop environment, that works everyway in the same way. I hate the windows file manager. I even more hate the chromeOS file manager, Mac has been too long to remember - but if I use a new system and just want to look at some files and do basic stuff - I do not want to have to figure out the various ways of doing things. I just want to do them, the way I am used to it.

So the general idea is good, but I do not like the windows clone style of this one too much, also it is very slow. But that might be different, if locally installed.

Btw. it took me some time, to find the github link

https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS

It should not be slow, sorry to hear about that. Maybe you could try it locally, indeed that is the code. I would love to hear more about "I do not like the windows clone style of this one too much" as I have tried to replicate Windows 10 and would like to know where I could improve. Thanks!

Yes, there are use cases, I too loved 'web-desktops' so made a comprehensive github repo listing 171 such webDesktops that people made. Please have a look here, you will love it : https://github.com/zriyans/awesome-OS

This is an excellent list, thanks! I'll be spending a while going through it.

I suspect novelty is indeed the primary purpose here. I view platforms like Sandstorm.io as a web operating system, since you install apps and manage files that use those apps contained within a web UI, but there's no real reason to emulate the look of a desktop OS, especially consider how much you have to fight with the browser to make that happen.

Most of the conventions of window-based desktop UIs inside a web browser is silly because it is, itself, a window. You are likely better off using multiple browser tabs than a fake windowed UI inside a single browser tab.

Ya novelty is all over my site. For me specifically the idea was always to replace my personal site and for users to feel like they had sat at my computer and were looking through my stuff/files. I use Windows 10, so that is what I decided to replicate visually.

It's an incredible work. I am pretty impressed how many desktop conventions I didn't expect to work, which did.

...Are you going to upgrade your home page to Windows 11 though? ;)

Thanks! I think eventually I will move to Windows 11, whenever I do for my own personal desktop.

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