Emacs in the Cloud

Emacs in the Cloud

[Paul Michael Reilly]

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I recently tried out a ChromeBook for a month or so.  The attraction was
primarily the simplicity of the system.  I love the idea of not having to
deal directly with an underlying OS, not having to configure devices or
drivers, not having to do backups, not worrying about losing files, or
dealing with security, or having the hardware go belly up.  While the
experience was a mixed success (I returned the box since it was underpowered
and led to very poor Chrome behavior: slow and lots of crashed tabs and
extensions).  But most of all, life without Emacs, even for just short
periods, just plain sucks.

But a sufficiently powerful machine could provide a ChromeBook experience
and undoubtedly will as ChromeOS matures.  But it will not be in Google's
interest to provide a native Emacs experience which leads to the likelihood
of a ChromeOS derivative, if only to have a clean Emacs integration,
(possible but unlikely) or a Cloud based Emacs experience being developed.

Before I go on, I think I basically understand Richard's (and others) strong
anti-cloud stance: it is crazy to put sensitive data totally in the hands of
giant corporations. But there is usefulness in having cloud based
organizations provide infrastructure support (data preservation, replication
for accessibility, simple security) for information that is not highly
sensitive, like a music collection.  And there is usefulness in providing
access to sensitive data that is provided by Cloud based infrastructure that
is under one's own control (a personal server for example) or with third
party organizations that one does trust (FSF, FreeCDDB, etc.)

So if you buy the premise that there are circumstances where a Cloud based
machine makes sense, but you want to have an Emacs experience in that
environment, where does that Emacs experience come from?  A true Emacs
extension/plugin for Chrome?  An Emacs built with an embedded web server?  A
limited Emacs exposed by ChromeOS that supports the existing Emacs
extensions? An Emacs protocol supported by an Apache module?

My preference leans towards the embedded server and/or the Emacs protocol
approaches.  I have not been tracking this list for a few years so I don't
know if any of this has been discussed already (a browse of the archives did
not reveal anything "cloud" related.)  And I figured that if there is any
work going on of a related nature, this list would be aware of it and
provide pointers/references.

Thanks,

-pmr

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Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 24.07.2011 08:44, schrieb Paul Michael Reilly:
> I recently tried out a ChromeBook for a month or so.  The attraction was
> primarily the simplicity of the system.  I love the idea of not having to
> deal directly with an underlying OS, not having to configure devices or
> drivers, not having to do backups, not worrying about losing files, or
> dealing with security, or having the hardware go belly up.  While the
> experience was a mixed success (I returned the box since it was underpowered
> and led to very poor Chrome behavior: slow and lots of crashed tabs and
> extensions).  But most of all, life without Emacs, even for just short
> periods, just plain sucks.
>
> But a sufficiently powerful machine could provide a ChromeBook experience
> and undoubtedly will as ChromeOS matures.  But it will not be in Google's
> interest to provide a native Emacs experience which leads to the likelihood
> of a ChromeOS derivative, if only to have a clean Emacs integration,
> (possible but unlikely) or a Cloud based Emacs experience being developed.
>
> Before I go on, I think I basically understand Richard's (and others) strong
> anti-cloud stance: it is crazy to put sensitive data totally in the hands of
> giant corporations. But there is usefulness in having cloud based
> organizations provide infrastructure support (data preservation, replication
> for accessibility, simple security) for information that is not highly
> sensitive, like a music collection.  And there is usefulness in providing
> access to sensitive data that is provided by Cloud based infrastructure that
> is under one's own control (a personal server for example) or with third
> party organizations that one does trust (FSF, FreeCDDB, etc.)
>
> So if you buy the premise that there are circumstances where a Cloud based
> machine makes sense, but you want to have an Emacs experience in that
> environment, where does that Emacs experience come from?  A true Emacs
> extension/plugin for Chrome?  An Emacs built with an embedded web server?  A
> limited Emacs exposed by ChromeOS that supports the existing Emacs
> extensions? An Emacs protocol supported by an Apache module?
>
> My preference leans towards the embedded server and/or the Emacs protocol
> approaches.  I have not been tracking this list for a few years so I don't
> know if any of this has been discussed already (a browse of the archives did
> not reveal anything "cloud" related.)  And I figured that if there is any
> work going on of a related nature, this list would be aware of it and
> provide pointers/references.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -pmr
>

Hi,

would support extending interest from pure code onto computers reality,
ie aggregating data and conclude from it.

If we want stay free, resp. become free, we can't permit establishing 
knowledge in the hands of some multis only:

what about "Sharing the benefits of free services" as a goal?

As for Emacs themselfes

"simplicity of the system" seems a focus worth attention.

Andreas

--
https://launchpad.net/python-mode
https://launchpad.net/s-x-emacs-werkstatt/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Richard Stallman]

    Before I go on, I think I basically understand Richard's (and others) strong
    anti-cloud stance:

Those words give an inaccurate impression of where I stand.

The term "cloud computing" is nebulous; people use it to refer to many
different ways of using the network, which raise different issues.  As
a result, it is effectively meaningless.  It is foolish to be "against
cloud computing" or "for cloud computing".  I decline to take any such
broad stand.  Instead I say that it is a mistake to use the term
"cloud computing".

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.

What I say is that to have control of your computing, you need to do
it with _your copy_ of a free program.  Thus, never do your computing
in someone else's server.  (Doing so is Software as a Service.)  See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html.

Thus, running someone else's copy of Emacs through a thin client is
something we discourage.

I also share your concern about what servers do with the information
they get about us, and that is not limited to "sensitive data".
See http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection-malte-spitz.
and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?_r=1

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Dimitri Fontaine]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> Thus, running someone else's copy of Emacs through a thin client is
> something we discourage.

Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
browser.

  http://bellard.org/jslinux/

What about adding a javascript port to emacs?

Regards,
-- 
dim

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Julien Danjou]

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On Mon, Jul 25 2011, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:

> What about adding a javascript port to emacs?

Clearly having an output engine targeting HTML5 would be great. That
might be possible considering GTK+ is now evolving to provide such a
backend.

However, until Emacs stops trying to support display systems from the
70's, it's not something we could plan serenely.

-- 
Julien Danjou
❱ http://julien.danjou.info

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Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[joakim]

Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 25 2011, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:
>
>> What about adding a javascript port to emacs?
>
> Clearly having an output engine targeting HTML5 would be great. That
> might be possible considering GTK+ is now evolving to provide such a
> backend.
>
> However, until Emacs stops trying to support display systems from the
> 70's, it's not something we could plan serenely.

Well, as someone working on Emacs + Webkit integration I'd like to add
that I feel the current Emacs display engine has many strengths newer
systems shouldn't remove.

I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.

-- 
Joakim Verona

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Julien Danjou]

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On Mon, Jul 25 2011, joakim@verona.se wrote:

> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.

Does not sound like a good argument. Tunneled display over ssh already
exists for X11 for years. Tunneling HTML data does not sound like
something very hard to accomplish neither. :)

-- 
Julien Danjou
❱ http://julien.danjou.info

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Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[James Cloos]

>>>>> "JD" == Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> writes:

JD> Does not sound like a good argument. Tunneled display over ssh already
JD> exists for X11 for years.

That only works for high bandwidth links and for beefy remote servers.

Emacs w/o text terminal support would be an unacceptable regression.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Richard Stallman]

I use Emacs on a terminal, to avoid hassles with the mouse.
I don't want to be limited to using old Emacs versions.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Bill Wohler]

Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 25 2011, joakim@verona.se wrote:
>
>> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
>> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
>> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
>> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.
>
> Does not sound like a good argument. Tunneled display over ssh already
> exists for X11 for years. Tunneling HTML data does not sound like
> something very hard to accomplish neither. :)

You missed the part about X clients not being installed in the first
place. Many installations do not. For example, none of our servers have
them installed (NASA Kepler Science Operations Center).

Also, in other cases, although I could run an X Emacs client over a
tunneled connection, it's too slow to be useful and that's why I use
terminal Emacs.

Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org> writes:

> What about using tramp in such cases?

I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
this way?

I could not live without terminal-based Emacs (and emacsclient -nw).
Well, I could live, but I couldn't edit :-).

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> aka <Bill.Wohler@nasa.gov>
http://www.newt.com/wohler/
GnuPG ID:610BD9AD

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Ken Raeburn]

On Jul 25, 2011, at 18:31, Bill Wohler wrote:
>> What about using tramp in such cases?
> 
> I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
> if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
> this way?

There's an ssh-mode out there I tracked down once, which runs ssh in a buffer (much like shell mode).  It's not bad, though someday I want to do a little work on the tramp interaction.  I don't know the copyright status of it, but it seems like it'd be a good addition to either Emacs or ELPA.

Ken

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[David Engster]

Bill Wohler writes:
> I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
> if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
> this way?

In eshell you can do

cd /ssh:somemachine:
df

and it will call 'df' remotely. This of course involves some serious
trickery with redirecting stdout to files and transferring them, and
even with a shared ssh connection this is way slower than using a
terminal directly. Still, it's pretty impressive and something I use
regularly.

> I could not live without terminal-based Emacs (and emacsclient -nw).

Well, me neither.

-David

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Dimitri Fontaine]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:
>> I could not live without terminal-based Emacs (and emacsclient -nw).
> Well, me neither.

That's why I carefully proposed a new port, not a new Emacs.

Regards,
-- 
dim

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Dimitri Fontaine]

Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org> writes:
> David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:
>>> I could not live without terminal-based Emacs (and emacsclient -nw).
>> Well, me neither.
>
> That's why I carefully proposed a new port, not a new Emacs.

Oh, and maybe that project would be an interesting way to test things out:

  https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki

  Emscripten is an LLVM-to-JavaScript compiler. It takes LLVM bitcode
  (which can be generated from C/C++, using llvm-gcc or clang, or any
  other language that can be converted into LLVM) and compiles that into
  JavaScript, which can be run on the web (or anywhere else JavaScript
  can run).

Another approach would be to link against webkit and have it do all the
rendering, I think that's about what TermKit does:

  http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit

Regards,
-- 
dim

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[joakim]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> Bill Wohler writes:
>> I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
>> if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
>> this way?
>
> In eshell you can do
>
> cd /ssh:somemachine:
> df
>
> and it will call 'df' remotely. This of course involves some serious
> trickery with redirecting stdout to files and transferring them, and
> even with a shared ssh connection this is way slower than using a
> terminal directly. Still, it's pretty impressive and something I use
> regularly.

Yes these are the sort of things I regularily wish were stable enough
for my everyday use. I haven't been able to assist so far.

Maybe this is on topic with regards to the original topic:
A cluster of Emacsen running on different machines sharing state over
the newish tcp based emacsclient interface. Maybe with Rudel and Guile
somewhere in there in the mix :) I would love for Emacs and Lisp to be
my single point of contact to the world of machines. Were not there yet. 

>
>> I could not live without terminal-based Emacs (and emacsclient -nw).
>
> Well, me neither.
>
> -David

-- 
Joakim Verona

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Michael Albinus]

Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> writes:

> I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
> if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
> this way?

M-x cd RET /ssh:host: RET
M-x shell RET <decide which shell> RET

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Bill Wohler]

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:

> Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> writes:
> 
> > I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
> > if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
> > this way?
> 
> M-x cd RET /ssh:host: RET
> M-x shell RET <decide which shell> RET

Thanks, Michael. That's pretty cool. It seems to be comparable to
logging into the remote host, running Emacs, and then M-x shell RET.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> aka <Bill.Wohler@nasa.gov>
http://www.newt.com/wohler/
GnuPG ID:610BD9AD

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Piet van Oostrum]

Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> writes:

> Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> writes:
>> 
>> > I've used tramp for opening files, but it seems that it would be painful
>> > if impossible for replacing an interactive shell session. Can you use it
>> > this way?
>> 
>> M-x cd RET /ssh:host: RET
>> M-x shell RET <decide which shell> RET
>
> Thanks, Michael. That's pretty cool. It seems to be comparable to
> logging into the remote host, running Emacs, and then M-x shell RET.

You can also, after dired /ssh:host/dir:, use ! to execute a shell
command on the remote host.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet@vanoostrum.org>
WWW: http://pietvanoostrum.com/
PGP key: [8DAE142BE17999C4]

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Andrew W. Nosenko]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 17:09, Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 25 2011, joakim@verona.se wrote:
>
>> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
>> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
>> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
>> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.
>
> Does not sound like a good argument. Tunneled display over ssh already
> exists for X11 for years. Tunneling HTML data does not sound like
> something very hard to accomplish neither. :)
>

1. Are you even tried to do such in real live (tunnel X11 through
SSH)?  Not in laboratory environment and fast LAN, but in the real
live, through not so fast channels and with server in a some another
country?  Hint: I tried and found that 3 seconds for redraw Open File
dialog is too much for me.

2. Even inside one machine and one user always exists a room for
terminal.  It was not once and not twice when ability to connect to
Emacs server from a terminal (from console, if more preciously) was a
lifebuoy when local X session become mad.

-- 
Andrew W. Nosenko <andrew.w.nosenko@gmail.com>

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Julien Danjou]

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On Sat, Jul 30 2011, Andrew W. Nosenko wrote:

> 1. Are you even tried to do such in real live (tunnel X11 through
> SSH)?  Not in laboratory environment and fast LAN, but in the real
> live, through not so fast channels and with server in a some another
> country?  Hint: I tried and found that 3 seconds for redraw Open File
> dialog is too much for me.

Yes.

Did you read my email? I just said it is possible, not that it is a good
and usable solution.¹

So: did you try to tunnel HTML in real life?
Hint: I'm sure you do it every day.


¹  Note that it would probably a lot more if Emacs and its dependency
   were using X asynchronous with XCB.

-- 
Julien Danjou
❱ http://julien.danjou.info

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Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Andrew W. Nosenko]

On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 19:41, Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 30 2011, Andrew W. Nosenko wrote:
>
>> 1. Are you even tried to do such in real live (tunnel X11 through
>> SSH)?  Not in laboratory environment and fast LAN, but in the real
>> live, through not so fast channels and with server in a some another
>> country?  Hint: I tried and found that 3 seconds for redraw Open File
>> dialog is too much for me.
>
> Yes.
>
> Did you read my email? I just said it is possible, not that it is a good
> and usable solution.¹

Excuse me, I read your mail as "X11 tunneling is possible thus
terminal support is unneeded".  Sorry for misunderstanding.

-- 
Andrew W. Nosenko <andrew.w.nosenko@gmail.com>

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Tim Cross]

On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Andrew W. Nosenko
<andrew.w.nosenko@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 17:09, Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 25 2011, joakim@verona.se wrote:
>>
>>> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
>>> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
>>> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
>>> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.
>>
>> Does not sound like a good argument. Tunneled display over ssh already
>> exists for X11 for years. Tunneling HTML data does not sound like
>> something very hard to accomplish neither. :)
>>
>
> 1. Are you even tried to do such in real live (tunnel X11 through
> SSH)?  Not in laboratory environment and fast LAN, but in the real
> live, through not so fast channels and with server in a some another
> country?  Hint: I tried and found that 3 seconds for redraw Open File
> dialog is too much for me.
>

I use to do this back between '98 and 2000 when I worked for a company
that had systems I was responsible for maintaining scattered between 3
countries - Australia, NZ and US.

This worked just fine, though you did need to use one of the X
compression protocols. On some days, you would see a few seconds
delay, but most of the time, it was quick enough to seem fairly
instant.

While I would imagine in most cases, network speeds and reliability
have increased, there are areas in the world which would still be
considered slow or unreliable. If you have satellite connectivity, you
can often experience delays (i.e. pipeline filling delay/latency etc).
However, none of these network issues are magically cured with "the
cloud" - in fact, anyone with really slow and unreliable connectivity
will likely find the cloud paradigm far worse.

The reality is that while X11 was primarily designed as a LAN
protocol, it is a protocol with large amounts of redundancy and
benefits a lot from things like differential compression algorithms.
If you are using X over a WAN connection and don't use any form of X
protocol compression and experience performance issues, the problem is
due to not trying IMO. This information is readily available and easy
to configure.

> 2. Even inside one machine and one user always exists a room for
> terminal.  It was not once and not twice when ability to connect to
> Emacs server from a terminal (from console, if more preciously) was a
> lifebuoy when local X session become mad.

The ability to connect to the emacs server from virtual consoles etc
is a very recent additon IIRC. Maybe emacs 22 or 23. However, this is
not a feature I've found necessary. I do use an ssl based vpn to
connect to my office machine from home and then use emacsclient (with
X) to connect to the emacs server I've left running on that system,
which I find extremely useful as it means I can leave my work emacs
session running for weeks at a time.

Tim

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Dimitri Fontaine]

joakim@verona.se writes:
> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.

What about using tramp in such cases?

Regards,
-- 
dim

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[joakim]

Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org> writes:

> joakim@verona.se writes:
>> I use a graphical gtk based emacs everyday, and I also use terminal
>> based Emacs sessions every day. Hardened remote servers will continue to
>> actively not have any X installations for years to come. Terminal Emacs
>> sessions clearly makes life more liveable in those cases.
>
> What about using tramp in such cases?

Tramp is a fantastic tool but it doesn't solve all use-cases.

>
> Regards,

-- 
Joakim Verona

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Masatake YAMATO]

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>> Thus, running someone else's copy of Emacs through a thin client is
>> something we discourage.
> 
> Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
> emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
> browser.
> 
>   http://bellard.org/jslinux/
> 
> What about adding a javascript port to emacs?
> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> dim
> 

http://www.ymacs.org/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Paul Michael Reilly]

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On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com> wrote:

> > Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> >> Thus, running someone else's copy of Emacs through a thin client is
> >> something we discourage.
> >
> > Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
> > emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
> > browser.
> >
> >   http://bellard.org/jslinux/
> >
> > What about adding a javascript port to emacs?
> >
> > Regards,
> > --
> > dim
> >
>
> http://www.ymacs.org/


This is very cool and has much potential.  Thanks for the link.

-pmr

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Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Richard Stallman]

    Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
    emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
    browser.

When you say "run Linux", I presume you really mean running GNU/Linux.
Linux by itself is not usable for a human user (see
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html).  Please call it GNU/Linux
to be fair to us.

Aside from that, a more substantial question is, is it a good idea to
run GNU/Linux in a browser this way?  The crucial question is whether
you can run _your own copy_ of it.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Dimitri Fontaine]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
>     emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
>     browser.
>
> When you say "run Linux", I presume you really mean running GNU/Linux.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't.

From the description online

   http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html

   Linux distribution

   I compiled a 2.6.20 Linux kernel (I guess any other version would
   work provided there is still an FPU emulator). The Linux kernel
   configuration, patch and the source code of the Linux starter (kind
   of BIOS) are available: linuxstart-20110526.tar.gz.

   The disk image is just a ram disk image loaded at boot time. It
   contains a filesystem generated with Buildroot containing BusyBox. I
   added my toy C compiler TinyCC and my unfinished but usable emacs
   clone QEmacs.

> Aside from that, a more substantial question is, is it a good idea to
> run GNU/Linux in a browser this way?  The crucial question is whether
> you can run _your own copy_ of it.

Due to security concerns in the browser sandboxes, I think that you
would need to host both your own copy and the emulator on the same
domain, but that would be about it.

Regards,
-- 
dim

RE: Emacs in the Cloud

[Klotz, Leigh]

Richard,

Jslinux is more than it seems. It's an entire x86 execution engine in
JavaScript, and JSLinux is just the sample OS that it runs.  The x86
emulator was written by Fabrice Bellard, who also wrote qemacs, which is
the emacs written in C and compiled with tcc, which he also wrote.  Both
of them are LGPL.  It's quite cute and usably fast and you might be
interested in it.

Leigh.

-----Original Message-----
From: emacs-devel-bounces+leigh.klotz=xerox.com@gnu.org
[mailto:emacs-devel-bounces+leigh.klotz=xerox.com@gnu.org] On Behalf Of
Richard Stallman
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 11:02 AM
To: Dimitri Fontaine
Cc: pmr@pajato.com; emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Emacs in the Cloud


    Some of the readers here might already know about jslinux, the PC
    emulator written in javascript.  It allows you to run linux in your
    browser.

When you say "run Linux", I presume you really mean running GNU/Linux.
Linux by itself is not usable for a human user (see
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html).  Please call it GNU/Linux
to be fair to us.

Aside from that, a more substantial question is, is it a good idea to
run GNU/Linux in a browser this way?  The crucial question is whether
you can run _your own copy_ of it.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Richard Stallman]

    Jslinux is more than it seems. It's an entire x86 execution engine in
    JavaScript, and JSLinux is just the sample OS that it runs.

If JSLinux is the sample OS, does the x86 execution engine have a
name?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Tim Cross]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 4:44 PM, Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com> wrote:
> I recently tried out a ChromeBook for a month or so.  The attraction was
> primarily the simplicity of the system.  I love the idea of not having to
> deal directly with an underlying OS, not having to configure devices or
> drivers, not having to do backups, not worrying about losing files, or
> dealing with security, or having the hardware go belly up.  While the
> experience was a mixed success (I returned the box since it was underpowered
> and led to very poor Chrome behavior: slow and lots of crashed tabs and
> extensions).  But most of all, life without Emacs, even for just short
> periods, just plain sucks.
> But a sufficiently powerful machine could provide a ChromeBook experience
> and undoubtedly will as ChromeOS matures.  But it will not be in Google's
> interest to provide a native Emacs experience which leads to the likelihood
> of a ChromeOS derivative, if only to have a clean Emacs integration,
> (possible but unlikely) or a Cloud based Emacs experience being developed.
> Before I go on, I think I basically understand Richard's (and others) strong
> anti-cloud stance: it is crazy to put sensitive data totally in the hands of
> giant corporations. But there is usefulness in having cloud based
> organizations provide infrastructure support (data preservation, replication
> for accessibility, simple security) for information that is not highly
> sensitive, like a music collection.  And there is usefulness in providing
> access to sensitive data that is provided by Cloud based infrastructure that
> is under one's own control (a personal server for example) or with third
> party organizations that one does trust (FSF, FreeCDDB, etc.)
> So if you buy the premise that there are circumstances where a Cloud based
> machine makes sense, but you want to have an Emacs experience in that
> environment, where does that Emacs experience come from?  A true Emacs
> extension/plugin for Chrome?  An Emacs built with an embedded web server?  A
> limited Emacs exposed by ChromeOS that supports the existing Emacs
> extensions? An Emacs protocol supported by an Apache module?
> My preference leans towards the embedded server and/or the Emacs protocol
> approaches.  I have not been tracking this list for a few years so I don't
> know if any of this has been discussed already (a browse of the archives did
> not reveal anything "cloud" related.)  And I figured that if there is any
> work going on of a related nature, this list would be aware of it and
> provide pointers/references.
> Thanks,
> -pmr
>

I have grown to really dislike this 'cloud' terminology - it is one of
the worst bullshit bingo words I've seen for a long time and unless
qualified with a lot of other definitions, means pretty much nothing.
As an example, nearly 20 years ago, I use to run emacs over a
compressed X protocol where emacs was running on a remote server - was
this running emacs in the cloud?

Perhaps the most disturbing part of your post was your rational for
why you like the concept of the cloud - essentially, because it has
the promise of relieving you of the burden of maintaining an OS,
various software packages and data backup/security etc. On first
glance, this seems like a nice idea - after all, we are all busy and
time is too short and really, a lot of this stuff is not that
interesting. Imagine all the freedom we could get without having to
worry about all the nitty gritty bits - just use and forget. However,
I think this is very very dangerous and in fact believe that instead
of freedom, it has the real danger of disenfranchising the user. Worse
still, as we have seen in the last 20 years, technology often starts
off as a luxury or special use application, but over time, becomes
more like an essential item. Consider how disadvantaged you become
today if you don't have access to a computer or the internet - sure,
you can still function at a level, but it is a much lower level.
Imagine if you lost access to all those on-line services you use
routinely each day. Just consider the added burden of dealing with
bills, banking, shopping etc etc if you had to do it without a
computer or access to the internet? Consider the difficulty in even
getting many jobs if you don't have an email address, access to
on-line job placement agencies and cannot provide your CV
electronically.

Now consider the same situation, but now you are totally dependent on
someone else for all those services. Put aside issues of data privacy
and ownership for a moment and just consider what the market might do
as you become moire and more dependent on their services. Go one step
further and consider a world where all the small providers have been
consumed by the larger corporations and now there is only one or two
actual service providers. Who will hold the power in that
relationship? I doubt it will be the end user.

Rather than the cloud as the solution, what we should be striving for
is technology that is easy to manage and reliable. There may be a role
for 'cloud' type facilities, but structured so that the end user
maintains control and retains freedom. We do need to make it easier
for everyone to handle their data, to maintain their OS and
applications and provide choice.

The 'cloud' is not the answer. The 'cloud' is just marketing hype that
many businesses like because they believe it will relieve them from
managing something that many find difficult to understand and
expensive to maintain. While it may promise to solve a real problem,
in many ways the cure is worse than the problem. We need to recognise
that technology is currently too complex and too expensive for many to
deal with easily and address those issues in a way which gives more
control and freedom. Maybe that can be achieved with a 'cloude 2.0'
that redefines things in a way which guarantees control and power
stays with the user, but I'm not sure how such an ideal can be
achieved in a less than ideal world. However, the goal of having emacs
available everywhere and anywhere I need it is IMO a good one!

Tim

P.S. As someone who is being forced to examine 'cloud' solutions for
my current employer, I'm shocked at how many of these so-called cloud
providers are not following even basic good practice wrt data
security, backup and maintenance or even guarantee of service. There
seems to be too many who are gambling with other peoples businesses -
essentially, take your money with lots of promises and hope nothing
goes wrong. If it does, take the money and run - its a gamble. If you
win, you make lots of money. If you lose, move on as you probably
won't have lost much personally. Meanwhile, the businesses you were
servicing go down the drain because they can't provide service, buill
customers etc etc.

Re: Emacs in the Cloud

[Richard Stallman]

    P.S. As someone who is being forced to examine 'cloud' solutions for
    my current employer, I'm shocked at how many of these so-called cloud
    providers are not following even basic good practice wrt data
    security, backup and maintenance or even guarantee of service.

The "cloud" referred to must be something that interferes with the
customer's judgment.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/