Possibility of an HTML5 Shell?

Distro
1

Hey everyone!

I just stumbled across this project and it’s pretty neat! I have some ideas for an OS of my own, but I never wanted to write the base of it from scratch — I always wanted to build upon a base. So, I guess you could say I just want to create a custom shell for a base OS. Redox interests me because it aims to fix the shortcomings of Linux and all the unnecessary residual/legacy code still in it.

I was wondering if it was possible to start a node server on boot of Redox, that would them run my HTML5/CSS/JS shell that hooks into the system. For example, if I click on “Empty Trash” in my UI, the trash is emptied on the actual OS (Redox).

I have no idea if what I want is feasible at the moment, or on the roadmap but I hope it is! Going to sleep now, but I’ll check responses (hopefully positive) in a couple hours.

2

At this moment, it is very little feasible, due to JS engines being extremely platform dependent, because of their high-level nature. The idea is nice, but I think it would be much easier to pick a language with a smaller runtime.

Because of the ecosystem of Redox, Rust would probably be the most fitting language at this moment.

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3

Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. The reason why I wanted it to be in JS is because 1) that’s a “programming” language I understand and 2) to make it easier for other people to build on top of.

Thanks for your reply!

4

It certainly makes sense, but we don’t have enough support yet. Maybe someday ;).

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