So they reinvented terminals, but worse
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Put a swap file on that bad boy boy and they've invented downloading ram!
This is a revolution.
Aw yiss, all of my information on Google’s servers siiiiiicc
I can see two issues here:
It’s not really a storageless computer. It’s using EFI as storage to build the ramdisk.
What happens if you need to change things because of a change of cloud account, change of cloud API etc etc
No computer is ever really storageless. Even the BIOS has to be stored somewhere. If you didn't have any storage, you wouldn't be able to load any code, and it would not be a computer, it would be a brick.
Not necessarily, you could build all of the boot stuff into hardware, have it send all input to the cloud server, and only have enough hardware to render images. Boom, no storage, everything is static.
Where is that boot code kept? Is that not storage? I mean, even magnetic core memory is storage. An array of vacuum tubes is storage. If you wired up a bunch of transistors to perform mathematic operations, do the wires and transistors on the breadboard count as storage? Maybe not. If you did it on an FPGA, I would say yes, though.
This is all semantics, of course, but it's interesting to think about nonetheless. Ask a web developer and a BIOS ROM developer about what's programmable, and you'll get two very different answers. :P
Soo, booting your computer from someone else's computer?
I mean we've had thin clients and PXE for ages?
More being able to use cloud storage and not need a physical computer. In theory the cloud can be accessed anywhere, even if a portion is down, not the same for a single physical PC.
More being able to use cloud storage and not need a physical computer.
Are you going to access The Cloud telepathically?
The cloud is many computers with a redundancy, you putting multiple PCs in remote locations so you can access when one goes down….?
Yes I understand how The Cloud works...?
Okay so you should comprehend how multiple “computers” allow a redundancy over a single one.
Yeah….?
You can’t access a remote physical computer without internet either? So what’s your point here?
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The joke is about what exactly you're doing with the cloud with no physical computer in front of you.
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And bootp before that, and tftp before that. So I think roughly... 35 years?
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Do thin clients and PXE require a server specifically configured to serve a boot image? (Genuinely asking.)
I'm not sure whether this project is doing something new by just accessing network resources that are nothing more than shared files, without any specific software running on the server (beyond just a server serving files).
Yes, they do. The novel thing here is serving the files out of Google Drive.
There are existing PXE servers that run over the Internet, like boot.netboot.xyz, so that you don't have to run your own (assuming you trust everyone involved in that connection). Those are far more practical.
Apple introduced the ability to boot from the internet, known as Internet Recovery, with the release of OS X Lion (10.7) in 2011. This feature allows Macs to connect to Apple’s servers and download a recovery system image to perform repairs, reinstall macOS, or restore from a Time Machine backup without needing a physical installation disk
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102271
Edit: I’m not taking away from the dev’s work. I was always a fan of Apple introducing their (limited) version of it into their firmware all those years ago.
This is different (and far less practical than Apple's approach). This one doesn't download the OS and store it, it pulls the files from Google drive every time they're accessed, so it's incredibly slow by comparison, but is technically running from the cloud. The Apple one downloads everything it needs and stores it, then pulls from that local copy.
What they both do is get a system into a desktop without a local disk or OS. I was adding to the discussion on the topic of “diskless booting”. Not comparing techs.
Yeah apparently adding to the discussion is frowned upon here, my comment chain got derailed by a “joke” because I tried to differentiate between the cloud and a PC to have a discussion….
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That's not booting from the net that's downloading an image and keeping it in RAM without sending any changed data back to the cloud, or needing to fetch anything once the image is downloaded.
Netboot.xyz ?
Interesting experiment, but I'd rather have a personal machine that isnt completely useless when/if the internet goes out. Also would be nice not to depend on a centralized service that could easily revoke access.
Seems like it's better suited for company work computers.
when/if the internet goes out.
Or worse, when it basically sends a different image...
Looks like a new CVE dropped lol
Boot from IPFS!
Good luck booting when Google nukes your account
y tho
“Primarily a silly pursuit”
Yeah, but it then goes on saying
"However, the dev also boasts that “the possibilities are endless” and would welcome any companies or individuals who wish to get in contact and discuss commercializing this project or something related to it."
And that's what I'm saying "y tho" to.
I mean, shit. If I did something stupid for fun and some idiot business major wants to pay me for an implementation, regardless of how useful It actually is, I’m not turning it down.
Funny
funny
So we’re back to PXI? Everything old is new again.
Neat technical problem to solve though just for fun
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So it's a thin client remote booting extremely slowly over a really high latency connection. Cool, the 1980s called and they want their tech back.
However, the dev also boasts that “the possibilities are endless” and would welcome any companies or individuals who wish to get in contact and discuss commercializing this project or something related to it.
"We're looking for dumb investors that don't understand technology so we can sell them a bridge."
Bro forgot to liberally sprinkle blockchain and AI dust on his project before offering it to investors
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One of my duties in my first job was to build diskless computers. I’d record an EPROM in the station and boot from a Novell server.
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