Bibud Alpha 5.1 released

Bibud, the open source social web desktop released its Alpha 5.1 version today, including many design changes and bigfixes, finally integrating links to git and a bugtracker.

Among the new features to Alpha 5.1 were:

Homepage improvements Facebook support in Chatroom Media sharing initial demo support

As always you can find Bibud at https://bibud.com.

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Bibud Social Web Desktop Alpha5 Released

Permalink | Author: Dan Dart | Published: 2010-08-01 19:01:00.001 UTC | Tags: alpha audio bibud desktop files friends html5 media sharing video web webos

The fifth bugfix update to the Bibud web desktop was released yesterday, and includes easier application installations, a better SDK, a clearer layout, better window management and removal of application previews not relevant to the web demo at this time.

If you've not come across Bibud before, it is a desktop and window manager including and designed to contain several web-based applications that work together to make your computer experience easier. It is designed to run on desktop, laptop or netbook computers, and with a low footprint, is designed to work well on the lowest specification computers available.

Bibud is the name of the entire project, but a demo of what the desktop will look like is available to demo on the web at https://bibud.com - later on it will come preinstalled inaide a GNU/Linux distribution enabling computers to connect and share data with each other in an as easy way as possible.

Technologies in use in Bibud are HTML5 for the audio and video elements, AJAX for most of the desktop, and the backends are programmed in PHP and MySQL, enabling any user with the LAMP stack installed (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) to easily download and install the software. The git repository is available on Github (edit 2021: changed organisation).

Currently, the following applications are available to try out:

Audio, Video, Pictures (media viewing applications)
Chatroom (an irc-esque chatroom)
A Blog application
Microblog (submit posts to Twitter, identi.ca, status.net, etc)
My Files (a file upload manager)
Friends (to keep track of contacts)
Background (to change desktop wallpaper)
User Info (to change user's passwords, etc)

Features just around the corner are:

Media sharing
Note taking applications
Extra goodies

You can try out the alpha 5 prerelease of the desktop by visiting https://bibud.com in your HTML5-compliant web browser.

The Bibud project are looking for volunteers to help with the project, code contributions, artwork, designs, proof-of-concepts and even just ideas are welcome, and may well be accepted into the official project distribution. If you have anything to contribute, please email the project leader at bibud@dandart.co.uk. The Bibud project is licensed under a MIT-style license.

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Xenon Web Desktop Alpha2 Released

Permalink | Author: Dan Dart | Published: 2010-02-01 22:17:00 UTC | Tags: blog cool desktop email linux mysql operating system php web xenon

The web desktop Xenon released version Alpha2 today. The release announcement from the website reads:

"Changes from Alpha include many security fixes (including SQL injection), the addition of the Chatroom app, Pictures app, width autoscaling, new tab launching, easier installation and various visual tweaks.

Please either use the https://web.archive.org/web/20100107134808/https://xenon.kevinghadyani.com/ (edit 2021: archived), or ddownload to your server at xenon.kevinghadyani.com/xenon_alpha2.tar.bz2 (edit 2021: not archived). Please help by submitting bugs, patches, new apps, icons, etc to xenon@dandart.co.uk. Thank you."

Xenon is a web desktop, which means that all your applications, work and settings are stored on the web. It can be run from any Internet-connected computer by browsing to the Xenon server or from your own server (in the case that you want a private instance, or want it installed into a netbook in the case where you do not have Internet connectivity). Eventually syncing support will be brought in which allows you to sync your settings and files to and from your local instance and the main server. Other features currently available include:

Audio player (featuring HTML5 Vorbis audio)
Video player (featuring HTML5 Theora video)
Picture viewer
Email (including within Xenon and outgoing email)
Blog
Chatroom (Public, open to all on the same instance)
Notes application
Friends application for social features
My Files, to upload various types of file
Wallpaper switcher

Upcoming features include:

Settings syncing and importing
A small footprint netbook/touchbook operating system to run on
Many others

To try the system out for yourself, you can try the demo (edit 2021: archived) or download the software at xenon.kevinghadyani.com/xenon_alpha2.tar.bz2 (edit 2021: not archived) to your server.

Please send patches, icons, ideas, apps, et al to xenon@dandart.co.uk

The project's website is at https://xenon.kevinghadyani.com (edit 2021: archived) or a shorter version: https://hackerlanes.com (edit 2021: archived)

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Xenon Alpha released!

Permalink | Author: Dan Dart | Published: 2009-12-29 13:20:00.001 UTC | Tags: ajax api apps cloud css desktop fast gui html html5 javascript linux networking operating system os php social sql xenon

An alpha version of the Xenon Desktop has been released. A description of the project follows.

Xenon is a portable web or browser based desktop for netbooks and thin clients, designed to be the easiest desktop ever.

The desktop includes a new GUI stepping away from traditional menus and is optimised for touchscreen and small devices.

The system integrates social networking features and standard desktop features into one software package.

Being browser-based, it is cross platform and cross architecture. It is built on HTML5 and PHP components, and can be run on extremely low-powered machines, allowing for cheap distribution and devices.

The backend can be run online (for users to access their data everywhere), on a personal LAN server, or on a small device, so the system can work offline, or if there are concerns about cloud storage.

An API is available at xenon.kevinghadyani.com/wiki/index.php/Developing_Apps (edit 2021: page not archived), so anyone can start developing apps to distribute in Xenon's upcoming App Store.

The project's homepage is located at https://hackerlanes.com (edit 2021: archived) including the online desktop, ready for instant testing and a download of the alpha image for your server. The actual small footprint OS that will run on netbooks will come later.

We encourage contributions to the project, in the form of code (the languages currently used are (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL), art (eg icons, backgrounds, GUI concepts) or even just ideas.

To send any requests or contributions, or to join the project, please email the head developer at dan.dart@googlemail.com. Thank you!

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Standards

Permalink | Author: Dan Dart | Published: 2008-09-25 14:57:00 UTC | Tags: argument desktop format gnome kde open standard war

First and foremost, well done community for adopting OpenDocument as the standard for office applications!

If the world adopts standards we will have a standard way of doing things, a standard window manager that everyone uses (pity no one can agree on one), a standard image format and all. This makes things easier for the community to understand their system and for it all to be the same.

The problem with that is that there will be less competition of ways of doing things and therefore no innovation. For example if everyone adopted KDE as their standard window manager, the innovation would slow down because GNOME and KDE aren't competing against each other. We need innovation because the world is driving itself so fast, new ideas excite us.

The thing we know is that these standards (if they exist) must be open, for without open standards, only one group of applications would be able to adopt the standard. For file format standards one must be able to use whichever application he or she wishes to use to view or edit the file. For desktop standards I personally do not want to be locked into a certain way of doing things. That is why for me, for file formats there should be simple open standards and for desktop applications, there should be no standard, just few competing ones. The KDE/GNOME war will never end but at least we know that if we have a problem we can use the other one, edit them as we choose, and we're sure there will be lots of innovation in these fields.

Do the pros outweigh the cons? Let me know your opinion.

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