OSDev.org

What about making a PHP OS, for net books so that 100% of the net books processing power is used for web browsing, and so that all the memory is stored on a server?

Yes, I've read the wiki inside and out.

Note: Sorry for rushing, post was lost 10 times due to data transfer problems and slow internet.

By 'memory' I assume you mean the persistent storage, not ram, correct? That sounds to be along the lines of Google Chrome OS or Palm's WebOS (both based on a Linux kernel).

Using PHP seems a bit arbitrary, it'd likely be even less suited for low level work than the other popular scripting languages (sans javascript) as at least most of those aren't as geared towards web development (you'd have to still write a lot of code in another language to get everything started, as well as extending PHP or pushing it closer and closer to userspace with more and more code written in another language).

I'm sorry, i may not have been completely clear. I made a little text diagram:

On the net book:
A simple OS with just a simple web browser that just connects to the server.

On the server:
Everything a normal os does(besides booting up and memory mangament) like a login screen and a web browser. (By doing this it simply helps it by not bogging the computer down with gui elements, making all you have to write besides the kernel is an object that allows connect to the web.)

This way, we can ship net books with about 5 MB of storage space on it (because everything is stored on the server) so it will be rrealllly cheap.

Mmmm, deja vu.

I'm sure the wiki has absolutely nothing on the subject, not that that's a bad thing.
I'll just wait for Dex to chime in on this lovely new, hip WebOS idea.

neos300 wrote:I'm sorry, i may not have been completely clear. I made a little text diagram:

On the net book:
A simple OS with just a simple web browser that just connects to the server.

On the server:
Everything a normal os does(besides booting up and memory mangament) like a login screen and a web browser. (By doing this it simply helps it by not bogging the computer down with gui elements, making all you have to write besides the kernel is an object that allows connect to the web.)

This way, we can ship net books with about 5 MB of storage space on it (because everything is stored on the server) so it will be rrealllly cheap.

So your idea is to make the neat, new, $250+ device you just bought useless without an Internet connection?

Not sure what you mean by that (when i said i searched the wiki i meant the getting started and beginner mistakes stuff completely, such as the sentence " And trying to write it in HTML, PHP or Javascript would just be proof that you have much to learn...".

So do people think i should go ahead with this? or not?

@madeofstaples
Exactly. Although this will probably make sense when someone creates a way to access the internet from absouletely everywhere

neos300 wrote:I'm sorry, i may not have been completely clear. I made a little text diagram:

On the net book:
A simple OS with just a simple web browser that just connects to the server.

On the server:
Everything a normal os does(besides booting up and memory mangament) like a login screen and a web browser. (By doing this it simply helps it by not bogging the computer down with gui elements, making all you have to write besides the kernel is an object that allows connect to the web.)

This way, we can ship net books with about 5 MB of storage space on it (because everything is stored on the server) so it will be rrealllly cheap.

This sounds a lot like the in progress Chrome OS by Google

@OP:
There are a few flaws in your logic. First, PHP as a systems programming language is only going to work with a lot of strange hacks, and even then, you won't get a real benefit from using it over something like C, especially if you want to put it on a small device. Second, an OS in PHP will be much harder to make than one in C, or even assembly, because you will need to do hard stuff in C or assembly just to get the language working at all. Third, storage on laptops is not, and never will be in the future, a limitation to the degree that a special OS is needed to fit on it - even a hundred gigabytes of flash memory is worth less than a netbook. This is even true for modern cell phones and PDAs, which often accept multi-gigabyte microSD cards. Fourth, even Linux, with some modification, can fit onto a 5 MB drive (IIRC, it has been done with LFS), and operate as a thin client, which is essentially what you're describing.

However, there are definitely worthwhile paths to take from this point. OSes based on alternative languages seem to be relatively popular as hobby projects, both for existing languages and for languages the programmers create for the OS. Web/"cloud" based OSes seem to be an area of development over the last few years, although they're kind of buzzword-y and hard to define IMO. If you like doing stuff under memory constraints, embedded real-time OSes are often very interesting, at least if you have the hardware. You can also try just writing a "normal" protected mode desktop-oriented OS, either to have written one, or for experience enough to do something more radical.

Am i crazy for coming up with this idea

Yes.

smeezekitty wrote:

Am i crazy for coming up with this idea

Yes.

Aren't we all?

For me it sounds like a thin client but using html and javascript instead of some remote Desktop protocol like X. This would be more work for the client, is limited to the web browser functionality but it could be a lot faster.

Today's web browsers are not that simple... You'll most probably still need most parts of a usual OS underneath, you just can keep the rest of native applications to a minimum. Even ChromeOS uses Linux instead of doing everything itself.

Yes, I think the main flaw in the reasoning is that you only need a "simple" OS for webbrowsing.

If your OS supports a GUI, user input, storage access (you want cookies, don't you?), and TCP/IP over wireless, there isn't that much that could be left out in order to make the OS "simple".

But most importantly, what the Wiki meant and what the OP apparently didn't quite get, doing an OS in PHP does not make it simpler in any way.

01000101 wrote:Mmmm, deja vu.

I'm sure the wiki has absolutely nothing on the subject, not that that's a bad thing.
I'll just wait for Dex to chime in on this lovely new, hip WebOS idea.

Did someone call my name
You could work on FAB (used to be called Fbrowser ) a bootable web brower, writte by a group of us over at the fasm forum
See here: http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=8281

Screenshot

It's certainly been thought about. Didn't Sun have a similar idea?

I think you may have stumbled upon one serious issue yourself:

Note: Sorry for rushing, post was lost 10 times due to data transfer problems and slow internet.