URL powered computer
Installing software is so 1990s-2000s. Let's configure and install software by giving URLs or taking them away. Everything is a URL
This is Package Management 3.0
You want your computer to have a behaviour? You search for that behaviour and you add the URL of the behaviour to text file or graphical user interface.
You can put your taskbar on the left, right, top or right and it would turn into a URL for copying and pasting elsewhere.
config:// config start menu in bottom left config:// start-menu has office software config:// start-menu has calculator config:// start menu has email software config:// login screen appears on startup
config:// my wifi is wifi network name password
This URL configures DNS server. config:// dns server is google
This URL would configure your mailclient.
config:// my mail server is fastmail / username / password config:// my mail server is gmail / username / password
This URL would automatically register you at halfbakery
config:// i have an account at halfbakery username password sam@samsquire.com
This special URL points to a file that tells your computer how to have that behaviour.
it would include instructions of files to download and their dependencies. it would reconcile dependencies.
Periodically the behaviour shall update itself.
Some behaviours have choices of implementation, so you can decide what you want from a chooser interface. This is similar to a Google search.
You want a piece of software? You tell it a URL and then it has that software installed. If you remove the URL, the software is uninstalled.
I'm a software engineer and if you've ever used Github or built a modern website it's a painful mess. You have to worry about files being in the right places to compile software, for header files to be in the right location.
You have to worry about Makefile scripts. You have to have a toolchain installed.
Joining a software development project can take a week to setup your machine so you can do everything that other developers need to do. You need accounts for everything, you need software installed and you need
I thought -- today, we're often loading the whole app, as a matter of opening a website. E.g., open GMail, and you're loading an entire app. Pinning apps, or wrapping them with Electron instances of browser, was an obvious thing, and people do that. However, what you're presenting here, is a lower level, and I like it. The protocol, like
config;//for the OS looks neat! I see it being useful for organizing system resources.The reason why I thought of this is because I recently created this Hacker News Comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34614497#34618834
People upvoted me.
Why isn't everything on a computer as easy as going to a website?