linuxontheweb

I'd love to get a real open-source, community-based machine learning framework working in my new-fangled web-type thing [1]. I think Tensorflow.js could really use a non-trivial use case, as they say, "in the wild"!

[1] https://github.com/linuxontheweb/linuxontheweb.github.io

That directory you linked to belongs to a previous version of the project.

As long as your files have a .gb (gameboy) or a .nes extension, you should be able to start playing them by double clicking them. You just need to drag n' drop whatever rom files you have onto the desktop. For controls, you should be able to use a USB gamepad, or the keys: w, a, s, d, ., /, space and enter.

Hmm... maybe dumb little things like automatically downloading the youtube videos from a certain channel so you can just have them right in your browser to watch whenever and however you want.

A well-documented online platform for enabling machine learning research is one use case that should have obvious interest. I think Tensorflow.js should work pretty well at this point, and I've heard of new-fangled APIs such as WebGPU that could start being put to good use.

One thing that's fascinated me for a while has been the concept of rolling your own hardware that can plug directly into the web. (I know Chrome has had WebUSB and WebBluetooth enabled for some years now.)

Rather than trying to answer the same basic question in slightly different terms, let me try a completely different tactic... perhaps the entire question of "actually doing things" needs to be addressed in a grand, cultural kind of way. When, for example, people are driving around in their cars and going to convenience stores, they are "actually doing things". Those kinds of things aren't very sustainable, though.

It should be pretty apparent that ours is a finite world, and there is going to need to be a hell of a lot of soul searching in order to figure out how to make this modern human experiment of ours actually work. So, it might help to think about looking at the web as the nervous system of the world. As long as there is nothing but blinding commercialism (bordering on sheer propaganda) traversing this nervous system, then it is hard to envision how our modern age can "end up" very well.

But if there can be a way to start injecting doses of sanity into the world's nervous system, then perhaps the younger generations will start being able to breathe easier when it comes to their long term prospects. In my opinion, there is a good possibility that getting people to start using the web under much more thoughtful and rational terms can only help matters.

Hacker News has itself been an interesting social experiment from a very successful capitalist enterprise. Perhaps it can start stimulating "real world" social experiments involving projects like Linux on the Web (or whatever the best name for it happens to be) so that we can all start turning the corner in terms of finding ways of life that can balance the needs of private things (like businesses) and public things (like human communities).

Hopefully fixed now!

That's an interesting philosophical point. There are definite future use cases for working with distributed or network-based file systems.

But the issue I needed to solve first has always been the one dealing with the purely local aspects of the system. People need to be convinced that this local system is as rock solid as all of the local native systems they're always working with.

It's a purely web-based desktop environment sitting at https://linuxontheweb.github.io/. That was the first link on the page. I've already tested it on Chrome, Edge and Firefox. I don't have access to Safari, so you can possibly let me know if there are any issues with it.

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.

Sorry, I'm kind of old. I never got the hang of dealing with mobile things!

(I assume this is in reference to the hand-coded html document entitled "What is Linux on the Web?" rather than the desktop environment itself.)

I think a better concept along those lines might be to work on a websocket bridge (e.g. via Node.js) to the "outside world" in order to offer the various kinds of services that can be difficult in a web browser context due to CORS policies.

If by "real-world" you are specifically talking about the commercial space, I wouldn't hold my breath. I can only imagine there first being a DIY/hobbyist scene attached to it, and then possibly an academic/research scene.

I think it could trivially enable all the micro-applications that people are constantly dreaming up... the kinds of things that are hidden away in all the various shell or python scripts across creation, as well as the little web apps all over github that just can't get any traction.

I think this could be a project to sort of unite all of those things under a common umbrella.

So I guess I'll start. AMA. It's been my baby for over a decade of my life.

I started to really learn about computers (i.e. using Debian instead of Windows) in the mid-2000's, but it wasn't until Chrome and Node.js popped up everywhere at the start of the next decade that I really began to dig into the issue of hardcore applications development.

So it was really a no-brainer for me to go along on the entire JS ecosystem ride of the 2010's, purely for the purpose of trying to get my computer to do what I wanted it to do (as opposed to making "apps" for everyone else).

In 2012, I started working on the code of the project now acronymically known as LOTW (Linux on the Web [1]), but I suppose it could just as easily have gone by the letters WDWT (Web Dev Without Tools).

[1] See: https://linuxontheweb.github.io/