Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 01:16:18 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: brett@peloton.runet.edu, tlambert@primenet.com, jcwells@u.washington.edu, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Targeting the server: Not such a good idea? Message-ID: <199910090116.SAA02614@usr09.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991008154001.043f3220@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Oct 8, 99 03:49:31 pm
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> O'Reilly's remarks are also consistent with what I'm saying. In his > speech, he advocates the use of the Web browser *as* a desktop environment, > which is fine! (Netscape had the same idea long before Tim did, and the > concept scared Microsoft silly.) It'd certainly be better than Yet Another > X Window Manager. > > But what is that web-browser-cum-GUI-cum-desktop going to run on? (There has > to be an underlying OS, after all.) Why not let it be BSD? It might be > one good way for FreeBSD to invade the desktop without just mimicking what > Linux and GNOME are doing. IMO, and that of some other people, among them researchers at I.B.M. Almaden, X Windows is an albatross, which should probably be dumped, at least as the top level interface. The replacement for this would be a CORBA application, compatible with KOM (per KDE), or some similar technology. This would allow embedding of applications (including X servers) into diplay devices. This would also allow "application farms", where your desktop is somewhere on the Internet, and through an authentication method, and via transport level security (e.g. IPSEC/IKE or SSL), you would authenticate to get your desktop embedded at your current location (whether this be a terminal, a full computer, or just a PDA). In such a world, the platform in front of you (i.e. "the desktop") doesn't matter, it's the back end servers that matter. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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