Web Operating System

Last Updated : 23 Aug, 2021

An Operating System is a system software that acts as an interface between computer hardware and programs requesting I/O. It manages computer hardware, software resources and allows other programs to run.

A Web Operating System is an internet based user interface that allows people to access applications not stored on their computers but completely or partly on Internet. It is a dummy operating system that does not directly interact with computer hardware and depends on traditional operating system to work. In other words, it is an interface for distributed computing system such as cloud.

Approach used to make a web operating system work
Web operating system are majorly created using AJAX and Flash.

Flash enables users to create interactive web pages. It is a vector animation software, originally designed to create animations on web pages using Vector graphics. Over the time, it has become more and more controllable via programming. As flash files stream over Internet hassle of downloading whole file to computer before accessing parts of it is reduced.

AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) is a set of technologies used to create asynchronous web applications. These web applications can send and retrieve data from a server in background without disturbing any other web page, in form of small bits of information.

Process :
Web OS works following a specified procedure.

A request is made by user to run a particular program, along with specified data
The request is then passed on to closest educative engine, it might reside anywhere on web
The engine then performs a search in its resources to check if it has requested program
It then checks whether local system can meet quality of service parameters or not
The engine might reject request or pass it on to other educative engines as well until one of it finally accepts it
Other than this, any Web OS user should be able to share his local resources with other users. Thus efficient strategies for searching and communicating are required.

Mainly, the two following searching strategies are used

Broadcast Strategy :
By requesting machine passes on request to every machine on list. Each of these machines then send back messages. If list contains n machines there will be 2n messages generated, n from requesting machine and other n from machines on list as positive or negative. Thus in this strategy network load is high.
The Serial Request Strategy – In this strategy requesting machine sends request containing rest of machines on list, to just one of machine on list, thus network load is comparatively very less. If the program is service requested is available on this machine it sends back a positive message else it passes on request to any one of machine with list of all machines remaining and so on.

Example –
There are many WebOS available on internet. In this example we are using SilveOs.

Website – https://www.silveos.com/

All you need to do is login to website and there it is, on your browser a dummy operating system.