i do alot of internaitonal traveling and have always been frustrated with having to change computer all the time at internet cafes and.. i searched to portable desktops and tried a few webOS.. nothing struck my fancy. webOS is cool but i need to be able to access my info offline as well.. there are pleanty of portable apps out there (as evidenced by this sit,) but i want to be able to isolate my desktop from the host machine not simply start up another program.. and to top off the challenge; i want cross-platform comatibility. - i am a dedicated linux user but my family uses mac and all the internet cafes use windows... and i need to have at least my basic tool accessible from anywhere i can insert a USB stick.
so,
last month i determined to make my own portable desktop.
after weeks of googling and a few trial runs, my plan is this:
- blackbox (because it is a shell/WM supported on linux/mac/windows.. load different binaries for each host OS but they will all read the same .rc config files.)
- the apps will, of necesity, be specific to each OS but reading the same DBs (i.e. i can still read the same email whether i start the .exe from windows or a .bin in linux.) i could go java with the apps.. but i'm shy of that because i know nothing about java.
- sharing home directory/documents. (possibly even synching home/ from a remote server.)
my progress so far: i started with windows because that will be the biggest challenge for me ( i know very little about windows programing.) yesterday i got my first working, windows prototype; blackbox loads from usb integrated with xenon file manager and atpad (a tabbed text editor) and a full suite of putty tools... all in less that 5MB of disk space! all the shortcuts are configured in blackbox and xenon to use only apps installed on the USB. also, all paths are relative so it doesn't matter what drive letter your pendrive is mounted on.
my current setup is: --(28 MB total)
blackbox
setroot (foruser-set backbgounds)
xenon file manager
ATPad
opera .. with opera mail
cool player (to be replaced)
7-zip compression
putty
psftp
puttygen
abiword
sumatraPDF
idump (for ipod)
installing aditional apps is pretty straightforward: download to apps\, edit blackbox menu to include, and enter it in the xenon settings if you want it to be associated with a certain file extension.
i will try to post the basic 5mb setup tonight if anyone is interested in participating in the project... i will continue workign on it, but as i said: my windows skills are minimal.
any IDEAS?? feedback ans comments are much appreciated.
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Most of what you said, while interesting, was a bit above my level of expertise, but one bit caught my attention:
The Blizzard games, at least Diablo and WarCraft II, do something very similar. These games don't support Linux and nor should they; they came out before Linux started getting big. But they do support Mac and Windows. Both games consisted of huge databases usable by either platform (Mac OS PPC and Wintel/x86) and the necessary executables for either platform. Somehow though, I think the Mac stuff was invisible to the PC side. I don't know how they did it exactly, but it was brilliant, and I don't know why more software doesn't work like that. Because it seems to me, at least with games, that the data files don't need to be platform-specific, just the executable code. Other than $$$, there should be no reason a game disc wouldn't be playable on an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Mac, Linux, and perhaps even Wii. Productivity software and operating systems are a bit trickier than games, but I don't see why they can't be unified. Sure, the proprietary model is probably more efficient, but the difference can't be too important, as machines get faster every year.
really? i didn't know that.. ( i've never used games
but it does make sense.
the difference between games and apps is that most of the database for games i imagine consists of audio/video files.. the bulky stuff; so that the largest part can be shared while using different binaries... in applications however, the sharable content (media, docs) is significantly smaller than the binaries themselves. thus, for a 10mb apps you share only 1mb of media...
(did that make sense?)
so yes you're right: same principle... just not quite as efficient; but it should still get the job done.
If they used some 3rd party development platform they probably have to pay big bucks for every supported platform.