
Ask HN: Is my addiction to porting Unix onto the web psychologically damaging? - dennykane
I&#x27;ve got a web site I&#x27;ve been working on for going on 5 years now. The project is called &quot;Linux on the Web&quot;.<p>See it here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linuxontheweb.appspot.com&#x2F;<p>The concept of a &quot;web based operating system&quot; is certainly not new. Most of the links returned by that search term are barely from this decade. The only project that seems to be active is called OS.js, and it is honestly a joke compared to mine.<p>For instance: it doesn&#x27;t even have a command line interface.<p>I can&#x27;t even begin to count how many thousands of man-hours I&#x27;ve spent on two Javascript modules called shell.js (the backend interpreter) and Terminal.js (the actual application).<p>My idea about this whole concept is very philosophical... a <i>true</i> web based OS would perfectly encompass all of the deep, technical aspects of general computation as well as the infinite potential of having immediate access to the world&#x27;s own information retrieval network.<p>This idea seems to be a no-brainer as far as being the kind of thing that smart, decent people should devote a non-trivial amount of their time working on.<p>And yet I can&#x27;t get the first human being to spend the least amount of time sitting down with me to browse the source code.<p>All I want to be able to do with my life is make connections with living human beings. I&#x27;m in my early 40&#x27;s now, so I remember a time before all of this stupid &quot;watch me as I stare at a stupid little rectangle filled with pixels&quot; kind of behavior that most people seem to be exhibiting.
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tradersam
Couple different things I'm seeing here.

> should devote a non-trivial amount of their time working on.

Just because you feel this way, doesn't mean anyone _should_ do anything.
People have their own goals and interests, and it seems like you have
different goals than most people you know.

> All I want to be able to do with my life is make connections with living
> human beings.

Then... get off the computer. Go to a bar for Christ's sake. Talk to people
you meet randomly. Sitting at home working on your project complaining you
don't have connections with people is like smoking a cigarette and saying your
lungs hurt. You wont find the connections you're looking for in your project.

