EyeOS an opensource web Desktop

EyeOS is a web Desktop, developed mainly in PHP, XML and javascript. It is based on the concept of cloud computing. By web Desktop I mean that it provides a desktop environment on a web browser. Yes, you can do most of the stuff that you do on your desktop in a single browser window. There are a lot of benefits of a web Desktop like EyeOS. Read on to find more about them :).

But why will I need it?? and does anybody even use it?? Well, why don't you give it a try, the eyeOS community provides this service at their public server eyeos.info. This server already has 50,000 members and most of them use it on a frequent basis. They use the features provided by eyeOS like word processing, file sharing, IM/chat, playing games. Since, these are the most basic and widely used applications among the internet users and most of the load is on the web server this theme of a web Desktop is getting popular and popular. EyeOS is being used at schools and other educational institutions too.

EyeOS can even be accessed on a mobile phone. Now, imagine all the computer stuff that you had to do can now be easily done on your mobile. And again since it is a server-client model hardly any processing will be taking place at your system making your job easier and faster. Probably the most powerful feature of eyeOS is that it doesn't demand a high performance machine on the client side just a browser and that's all. And that's why many communities and institutions are deploying eyeOS on their server to do their daily work.

At first when I used it, it proved to be far better than what I expected. May be because I never thought of doing all of these things on a single browser window. If someone is a frequent desktop user and consider eyeOS to be an alternative then he might get disappointed. EyeOS can't take the place of a Desktop but it is a great step forward in the field of web Desktops. It provides 67 different applicatons all of which work pretty well.

Everyone should at least give it a try on their public server and if anyone is planning to install it then here is a small howto to install eyeOS on ubuntu 9.04.

http://linuxers.org/howto/how-install-eyeos-ubuntu-904