OSDev.org

since google launched it's gmail, a new trend appeared - dreaming of non-platform dependant applications and i do not mean the pure java (etc) kind but the more heavily based on browser kind. the google-spreadsheet kind. it might take some time but office-like applications will appear soon enough and even graphical editing and heavier things might follow. in this kind of future, assuming a decent share of users will accept it, how should a "client" machine look like? both softwere and hardwere-wise? will the demends of a client-os change?

although i find it hard to belive it'll serve as a replacement in the near future to the current setting as some things "must" remain local such as heavy graphical games.... and even the simpler applications would require a constant connection and have many minuses - no point in doing things remotly which can be done localy and have their results transmitted... right?
assuming a user is constantly connected and needs no local storage, what should the os provide? what does a browser require to be able to surf? frankly i can't imagine leaving out almost anything... i belive the os'll remain the same. what do u think?

hmmm dunno to call this spam or just a random first time post

it does bring up a good point though
I was thinking the same thign myself when I wanted to work on my flash video at school... be cool to just login to a site with your serial number somehow have remote storage and then just work on flash.....

I also think that such a OS would be usefull, that way you could get to your OS from any pc in the world with a Internet connection and web browser.
Your OS would need a bootable web browser.

I hate web applications. Slow and clumsy in my opinion.

See http://www.youos.com , I'm using it right now to post this

Legend wrote:I hate web applications. Slow and clumsy in my opinion.

This would certainly need to change in order for everyone to take this kind of a market seriously.

You can make decent, low-latency, applications using flash... but flash is a client-side technology, and as such, wouldn't have the capability (that I know of) to save files on a remote server. It would need to be coupled with a server-side technology (such as PHP).

I think the biggest thing you'll have to convince users of, however, is that they're still secure. Many people will believe they are more prone to having their personal data hacked/stolen when it's contained on a remote server (and, quite frankly, this is probably true to a certain extent).

As per the poster's original question -- indeed, it would seem that the client side wouldn't change a whole lot. The hardware would be biased towards faster connections (Gigabit ethernet, etc)... techically, if all the processing was done on a server, the client could be relatively dumb, and power-less... however, since I think a lot of processing would be dumped client-side (distributes the load better), then the client processor must remain similar to today's. And, yes, I'd predict a lot of apps would be entirely client-side (such as games), with limited network activity to transmit player status when played over a network, and perhaps to save games over a network.

--Jeff