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Comment by scarygliders | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely do not mean to be rude when I say "The description of what this is, is complete word salad."

Having tried the thing, it seems best summarized - currently - as "This thing is a GUI, written in javascript, allowing a user to view and manipulate the contents of a browser's origin private file system (OPFS)."

Did I get it right?

Also, what, exactly, would be its use case(s)?

You seem to be of a similar generation to me (Gen X)? So like yourself I grew up through those halcyon days of ZX81s, VIC-20's, Amigas and so on, as well as various flavours of Unixen, and finally Linux these days. I just don't grok the relationship between the aforementioned word salad introduction, and whatever the usefulness of this Thing could be.

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How's this for a word peanut: It's like Linux... only on the web.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Linux is its ability to provide an interface between the low-level files sitting on a hard drive and the (C system call) application layer.

The main point of this project is currently the ability to provide a dependable interface between the low-level files sitting in the browser-managed sandbox and the (JS call) application layer.

Once people start getting comfortable with the idea that the files in their web browsers are as dependable as the files in their native systems, then we can start having more serious discussions about the exact use cases that might follow.

It'll have to involve an evolutionary process just like GNU/Linux itself experienced in the 1990's.

People read a lot of different things into the word Linux, so saying something is like Linux without qualifying in what sense is probably going to be confusing to a lot of people.

Like I've been using Linux for 20 years, you bet "like Linux" conjures up different ideas in my head than in for example my girlfriend's, she has mostly interacted with modern Linux DEs, never configured XFree86 in vim on a 15" CRT and has no fond memories of sysvinit.

Communication is tricky that way.

I have issues with seeing this as word salad, simply because in most instances that term is used to describe utterances that are entirely nonsensically, linguistic content so utterly absteuse that one has no hope of deriving any sort of meaning from it other rnsn, well, it's just a bunch of words tossed together. having read the description of the project, as well as several comments here on HN, I personally don't understand how someone might read that and somehow take away nothing from it in understanding. I feel like it is written fairly clearly and effectively, but ofc that's just me and as with all things, YMMV.

Can you give us a summary?

I’m struggling to see how a way to treat the browser cache as a file system is supposed to inject sanity into human communication.

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