Mozilla Laptop/Operating system?

[cmb271]

I know I maybe trying to reinvent the wheel here but instead I'm just trying to make it secure, with google chrome OS the only internet based OS that's popular I question why Mozilla hasn't tried anything yet. With firefox being somewhat better in some areas and could use improvements in others I question why hasn't mozilla attempted to create a desktop based operating system.

It'd be an interesting way to spread the message and you can always play on the idea that google isn't in your best interest, I feel that mozilla is slowly going into the background when in reality it's a perfectly good browser that people just don't know about because everyone is suggested to use chrome (maybe because everyone uses google and it's always there). I'd like to see the world embrace the ideal of a OS based on the web but isn't monitored by a hugh data mining company who's main goal is to make a dollar off your life, I know it wouldn't be easy but if you can push for support from other privacy advocates and design the UI to be something unique and appealing to new users I feel it could be an interesting project.

I'd like to see who else would enjoy the ideal of a low cost PC running a OS developed by firefox, using Linux it would open the doors to alot of hardware support as well give people the ability to install it on there own personal laptops or desktops (Unlike chrome OS where it's either a chrome PC or nothing). I would love to see if anyone else would get behind such an idea and if it grows in popularity I'd like to be one of the developers, while I'm just starting out in the development side of the internet I'm more then happy to help with what little I can do.

[patrickjdempsey]

Personally, I don't understand the appeal in a device where all of your personal data exists on a cloud somewhere and requires an internet connection just to be able to use basic features. I can only think that the popularity of such devices stems from ignorance and price point. I can only shake my head and yell at these darn kids to get off my lawn with their cloud-based data storage and "web-apps" (whatever the heck-fire a web-app even is supposed to be).

[LoudNoise]

I would assume that this is a mobo idea. The kids are standing on the sidewalk and simply projecting themselves into your yard.

[DanRaisch]

The only excuse I can see for Chromebooks is school use, where it's in the interest of the teachers and administrators to limit what the students can do or store on publicly provided hardware. The units are all networked when in school so everything the kids work on is accessible to those supervising their studies/work.

[cmb271]

Personally, I don't understand the appeal in a device where all of your personal data exists on a cloud somewhere and requires an internet connection just to be able to use basic features. .

Do remember that google only did that so they can control the content, if say firefox was included into that it could be designed to have minimalistic offline applications as well as web applications we remove the barrier of having to constantly be online, assuming you could install this spin off onto your own personal computer you open the chance that people can use there own local storage instead of the cloud while still maintaining a light weight distro thats main goal is to use the internet.

[cmb271]

The only excuse I can see for Chromebooks is school use, where it's in the interest of the teachers and administrators to limit what the students can do or store on publicly provided hardware. The units are all networked when in school so everything the kids work on is accessible to those supervising their studies/work.

you'd be surprised how little work people as well as companies do offline, unless it's a major corperation who's into graphical design and need high end PCs running photoshop and some highly expensive adobe program then most corperate work can be done in the cloud, including giving the firefox os the ability to create a web server which can host all the other firefox OS users files within a building gives network administrators a chance to maintain everything and gives the employees a safer low cost way to access there files and do there day to day work.

[DanRaisch]

Actually, I worked for a very major corporation for 41 years and we did a lot of our important work off-line. There are things like long range plans, acquisition and merger proposals, financial reports, etc. that the company did not want on the cloud or external servers until after they were made public. MS Office is still the major game in town for those sorts of things for corporate users.

[cmb271]

well that's the fun part about working with linux is you can have native standalone offline applications such as libreoffice and such and since I envision this working on everyones PCs and not custom built PCs. The new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B was recently released and it seems like the perfect canidate for a microPC that can be used for corperations of even home use, I myself only use my computer for basic internet browsing, maybe some tutorials and some text files here and there when I need to write down an idea that I want to look into later. While the work can be stored on the cloud or on the hard drive firefox would make a good platform for a lightweight operating system with a main focus on online productivity as well as an ability for offline use.

[patrickjdempsey]

If you have native applications then that assumes native that storage, and then it's just Linux with Firefox installed. No need for fancy branding or weird cloud storage.

[cmb271]

hmm, maybe build applications within firefox that act as the native applications, assuming they'd be more lightweight when it comes to hardware ability and storage space.

[DanRaisch]

Didn't MS get in trouble to embedding IE so deeply into the OS that it was considered anti-competitive?

[patrickjdempsey]

hmm, maybe build applications within firefox that act as the native applications, assuming they'd be more lightweight when it comes to hardware ability and storage space.

There's nothing "lightweight" about that. Sure the application would appear smaller, but only because it's offloading all of the heavy lifting to Firefox. Generally, applications running directly in the OS require fewer resources than one that runs through a 3rd party. You've also got more control over them and are able to monitor their resources better. "Web apps" also have severe security limitations that OS-level applications don't have because the browser is supposed to keep web traffic separate from disk IO and interface.