Around 9 and a half months ago I started working on a small idea I had, back then I thought to myself what if I could implement a full desktop environment with all the regular features of a desktop environment such as a full window manager and high-level abstractions of concepts like running apps and managing your desktop, but all with the exception of running in your web browser as a web app.
above a screenshot of "web-desktop-environment" in action using the Nord theme and vs-code app
But way β
In theory, this may sound unnecessary (at the very least for some people), you could think to yourself, isn't the web much slower than my daily used blazing fast native CPP-based desktop environment?
or, what about support for all of the existing apps that weren't built to run on a web environment? well before I start and explain my solution to both those issue I want to start over and list the Pros I personally see in a web-based desktop environment -
The PROs π€
- accessible from anywhere - since it exists in the form of a website.
- isn't bound to a physical box - you don't must to have a physical PC, you could host your PC from anywhere, sometimes working directly from a public server could be awesome for some developers.
- great for low-end computers or servers - small PC boards like the raspberry PIs or low-end servers with virtual CPU/s and no GPU can struggle running a full desktop and dealing with rendering, but running a desktop environment web server? that's no problem.
The flows π
now, what about the flows with a web desktop environment?
let's start with the performance issues -
well, the way why address those is by breaking the regular way people have been writing web applications for the last few years, instead of providing to the user with a client app that contains all of the app logic and supporting that logic flow with a rest/socket API to supply the native functionalities like must full-stack web apps do, we instead move all of the logic to the server and only provide the client with instructions of what the server wants him to currently render, this moves out all of the heavy calculation and stuff that relies heavily on multithreading away from the client to into the server and by doing so keeps the web lightweight, fast and eliminate the performance issue with running a complete desktop on the browser.
and what about the backward compatibility issue?
this is the hard one, I am working hard to find a way to enable support for x11 applications to run on the desktop environment but in the meantime and as of today (03.04.21) support for gtk3-apps to run via the broadway backend of gtk3 is already in the main branch and soon to be released to NPM.
above a "screenshot of web-desktop-environment" in action running gnome-mines (a GTK3 app) via the broadway backend
Main features π
Apps
- terminal emulator π©βπ»
- visual studio code β
- file explorer π
- text editor π
- media player π§
- settings/ system info app β
- any GTK3 app (30% of apps do crash) πΎ
Desktop
- slick-looking desktop π»
- lot's of themes π¨
- complete sync between all instances π¦<->π¦
Screenshots πΌ
above a screenshot of "web-desktop-environment" in action using the main (dark) theme
above a screenshot of "web-desktop-environment" in action running in PWA mode
Live demo π₯
You can visit the live client side demo here https://web-desktop.app/demo , I can promise you that playing a bit with the themes can be quite fun!!
above a screenshot of "web-desktop-environment" in demo mode using the dark transparent theme
Learn more
If you are looking to learn more, install the app or even just wanting to give me a star on GitHub π here is the link
shmuelhizmi
/
web-desktop-environment
a web/node-based cross-platform desktop environment
A cross-platform desktop-environment with a web interface
Installation and run guide
First, we need to make sure we have node and npm installed, I recommend using node 14.x with npm 7.x.
now we will install "web-desktop-environment" with the following commands -
npm install @web-desktop-environment/home-edition-server or npm install @web-desktop-environment/development-edition-server --unsafe-perm for the development edition of "web-desktop-environment".
After the "web-desktop-environment" server is installed we can run it using
the command web-desktop-home or web-desktop-dev for the development edition of "web-desktop-environment".
Now that "web-desktop-environment" is running we can enter "https://www.web-desktop.app" and connect to it.
to connect to the server we will need to enter the server host and port,
if we are running the server locally we can keep the default localhost host, otherwise enter the server host IP,
to get the server port we can look at the server console output, it should print somewhere in the start something along theβ¦
Discussion (17)
Wow! This is an incredibly cool idea! I had similar thoughts and ideas, but I decided to focus on building the framework first. Thank you for the article. I will definitely follow your project.
Thanks, be sure to update me if you decide to pursue with your idea, competition is always good :)
okay! π
It is a great idea. Adding to it, I was looking for creating a web server or something like this on which I can have my documents. And I can access the documents on internet from anywhere. For web server it could be low end system or on Raspberry Pi
Hey anoop, sounds cool, if you want there is a setup page on my github page if you like to try it out, you can easily download and soon even edit text document from "web-desktop-environment"
Not a bad idea
I mean its actually innovative
Inspiredπ !
Absolutely in awe
Wow very cool.
This is absolutely amazing. From the idea to the execution
Thank you
Amazing job, I would have never had the patience!
Thanks!
This is awesome! I just connected it to a docker container with minimal fuss.
Cool, let me know if you have any feedback!
How does your file manager work?
github.com/shmuelhizmi/web-desktop... - backend
should actually be simple to understand if you know react, if you want more advance details you can contact me on twitter :)
Interesting