Comment by Lerc
6 months ago
I made one of these years ago, much less polished but broadly similar.
From that perspective you have done well to avoid discouragement. Most of the feedback I received was negative. Worse was that the negative feedback was not related to my implementation but arguing that I should not try at all.
If you do keep working on this project for the rest of your life, I commend you.
I kind of got split between making a client only version (all data client side), a file storage server where all brains are client side but persistent data is on a server, or a direct Linux login (open real shell on browser. Linux executables can connect to a socket to open windows on the browser and provide a UI similar to how X11 does, only with a much smarter UI host)
In recent years I have been doing a few experiments working on the areas that were difficult. So many things have been added to browsers since I started, I can't recall exactly how long ago that was but I remember boot2gecko adding features that I needed.
Recently I have been experimenting with launching web workers which asks for an API and is given a MessagePort with code to construct functions that translate to messages. That way all of the desktop features can be provided as permissions with some auditing theoretically(but unimplemented) available.
Wow - indeed. I see you made something like this already back in 2012. Impressive: https://github.com/Lerc/notanos That is more than 13 years ago when websockets where about to become generally available. Impressive!
Don't be discouraged by people that argue what you should or should not do. The world is full with people with their own agenda or that simply have a too narrow view of how their world should operate.
To everyone: Ignore the nay-sayers. You've done more than most of them ever attempted. It's more easily said than done, negative feedback tends to set off a stronger emotional response. Seek feedback from people you know will support you.
I play guitar, for fun. I've once posted a recording. Someone said something mean. It really hurt me somehow, I didn't record anything at all in the following 15 years.
Recently I've been talking a lot with my sister, we both really liked a song so we agreed to record a cover. I've now been working on that for many evenings. I'm sharing the WIP demos with people I know will give me constructive feedback. I keep going. It's more work than I've expected! But it's so much fun.
Don't stop dreaming.
Totally agree, the nay-sayers don't phase me anymore because I enjoy what I am doing, everything else that comes from my work is just a freebie.
Notanos looks awesome, I will check it out.
There are several milestones of my project that will likely require forks in the road where I might have to do a rewrite, but I hope to be able to keep doing it and learning.
I think that in 10-20 years with the progress of AI, this project could become something quite amazing, but by then maybe everything will be amazing by todays standards.
Arrgh, now I get to live with the shame of someone looking at my code. Be wary of the https://github.com/Lerc/userserv component, because that's the bit that is only really proof-of-concept level and runs as root. It's the bit that allows user login (it forks and drops privileges to the user before serving static files) It's probably a candidate for a Rust rewrite.
I agree on the AI part. When ChatGPT4 came out my test case for it was getting it to make a filesystem on top of IndexDB and and a set of edge case tests. It did quite a respectable job (until it got bigger than the context anyway). I should go back and finish the job now that contexts are larger.