
Show HN: Booste – a cloud-hosted desktop for developers - edunteman
http://www.devs.booste.io/
======
Nullabillity
Well, this sucks. If the idea itself wasn't dystopian enough, all of the
claims are thinly-veiled bullshit.

> 90% Off Device Cost

Only if you're not counting the subscription fees. A thin client ($150
according to you, and that seems to be on the low side) and a year of the $60
plan would cost $870. You can get a lot of laptop for that money, and it would
last longer than a year. And it wouldn't be tethered to the internet.

> Booste apps have no speed limit. The elastic cloud delivers the processing
> performance you need, when you need it.

It's still running on hardware eventually, there will inevitably be
performance limits.

> 100x Faster Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

How does that help you, if it then has to get to your computer in the least
efficient format possible?

> Code, run, test, and deploy projects without changing your desktop workflow.

Or.. I could just do that from my desktop, changing even less.

> [No] Expensive laptops

See above.

> [No] software installs

Read as: no flexibility.

> [No] updates

You might not be told that they're happening, but the continuous detereoration
will still be there. But now you can't even do anything about it!

> [No] dependency conflicts

I'm almost surprised it doesn't claim to solve world peace.

> [No] virtual machines

Presumably it's running in one?

> [No] OS compatibility

Nonsense. You're only running Windows 10, and adding even more compatibility
problems on top of that.

~~~
mkoryak
You're being too harsh. Yes his price is probably a bit high for the average
user, but it is probably this way either because he's passing on his small
scale cost or he made up some numbers.

I use Google's web based IDE to write code (at work), and it is a game
changer. I can pick up where I left off from any device (that's not a phone).
I used to be a die hard intellij fan, but now I never use it.

Why? Because it's not in the cloud.

~~~
ZeroCool2u
What's this web based IDE called? Can you drop a link to it please?

~~~
comtn
I assume he means [https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing-
googl...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing-google-cloud-
shels-new-code-editor)

but there are a plethora of online IDE's that can integrate well with GCP.

I miss Bespin, it later became skywriter, and was eventually integrated into
the ACE online editor. For the few times I needed to edit something on the go,
and didn't have my laptop, it worked wonderfully. I was not a big fan of the
direction it took, moving away from what I would consider a fully opensource
platform, to a paid one, but it does its job, and it does it well.

GCP cloud editor uses Eclipse Orion. I am excited to see the expansion of the
project, and the direction it takes. Cloud IDE's have always been badass.

------
edunteman
It's been brought to my attention that the website and HN post was misleading
regarding the "from any device" claim.

Booste currently only runs on Windows machines, and runs Windows apps. I have
updated the plans page to more clearly reflect this.

I am actively developing this for other device platforms, starting with Mac
and Linux on the device side, and Linux environments on the cloud side.

I'm the sole developer of this product and wrote the first line of code only
three months ago. I appreciate your patience. My intent is not to mislead - it
is to paint the vision.

~~~
bluerobotcat
Running a development environment from an iPad would really catch my interest.
It's something I've already done in the past using Emacs over Blink (a Mosh
terminal for iOS), but the experience was not ideal.

I'd need to be able to open multiple terminals and install semi-random
programs though. It's not clear to me if that's fits in with your vision.

~~~
heavyset_go
You can serve VS Code up with a web server and use it with anything that has a
browser.

~~~
cityzen
Do you have any info on how to do this?

~~~
heavyset_go
LinuxServer.io has a Docker image that I use.

~~~
edunteman
Super helpful here, thanks for pointing me toward this!

------
edunteman
Hey HN!

First-time poster here, excited to show you what I've been working on. I'm a
recent mechanical engineering grad and self-taught developer. I thought it was
a pain in the ass (can we swear on HN?) to walk to a campus computer lab
whenever I needed to do 3D CAD or run intensive simulations or code scripts.
My less-than-powerful laptop became preventative in my work.

I built a simple-to-use remote desktop system, with popular engineering apps
pre-installed, hosted in the cloud. Now, I'm able to run CAD (Autodesk Fusion
360) and development tools (Android Studio) from a $200 device. I think it's
silly that the up-front cost of a workstation can prevent software and
mechanical engineers from doing their work.

I threw together a free version for your feedback, and I hope to hear your
opinions! I'm interviewing for YC W20, so your honest thoughts (and potential
usership) would be fantastic.

Cheers! Erik

~~~
devxpy
What tech is the remote desktop based on? VNC?

Quite curious about how you keep the latency low enough that it to type in an
editor.

~~~
edunteman
I actually have not engineered the streaming portion, so latency is the same
as current VNC and RDP protocols.

To get the product together as fast as possible (first line of code written
three months ago), I actually did not reengineer the remote desktop protocol.
In fact, the current product simply gives you the IP and password info to plug
into your Windows Remote Desktop client app.

Future plans are to integrate RDP into the Booste app, to make the experience
seem more native.

After that, I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame
streaming companies such as Vectordash and Nvidia GeForce Now.

~~~
seabrookmx
> I'll be implementing the modern H.265 protocol used by videogame streaming
> companies

Are you sure that's the right solution?

Remote desktop is able to render sharp fonts because its sending a lot of
desktop contextual information over the wire, as opposed to just doing a dump
"capture the screen, encode it, and send" like the videogame streaming systems
do.

In a videogame, you can get away with small fringes on things (compression
artifacts) but it would be quite jarring in your text editor.

I've actually ran into this with the NX protocol (NoMachine) before, and it's
one of the main reasons I went away from it.

~~~
GordonS
I agree with this, and it's exactly the reason why RDP is a vastly better
experience than VNC.

Using VNC on a LAN isn't great, but over WAN it's a truely miserable
experience.

------
millstone
Unless you have a license to provide Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft apps over
the cloud in this way, you should take this down immediately. They have lots
of lawyers.

~~~
edunteman
Thanks for the warning!

All apps currently offered are free licenses, with the exception of the Adobe
suite and Autodesk Fusion. For those, you follow a workflow as if you were
doing it on your own device.

For Adobe, you're prompted to enter your personal license info (Bring Your Own
License). Adobe limits your usage to a certain quantity of devices per
license, and it recognizes the app in the Booste cloud as a uniqe device,
prompting you to log out of your other devices if you've reached capacity.

For Autodesk, I actually just provide the download link for the software,
leading you through the process to properly do the download and license
compliance yourself as if you were a traditional desktop user.

I understand that this answer may not be enough, and will be diving deeper
into the implications. Thank you.

------
suhail
Microsoft probably won’t notice for now but just be careful: the licensing for
Windows 10 requires a very specific kind of license that’s fairly pricey per
user. You can’t just use a normal end-user / student one. As a result, the
economics are really tough.

This idea was actually the first idea for Mighty before I pivoted a few months
ago.

macOS can only be run on Apple hardware btw. That also makes the cost
structure for this kind of business complex.

Good luck!

~~~
edunteman
Suhail, this is excellent insight. Saving me some hard lessons.

Currently using Windows 10 Servers on user-dedicated EC2 instances, so costs
are bundled in, but once I get into a multi-tenant setup and cost optimization
I'll see what I can work out with Microsoft.

Serverside MacOS is a nut I'm not trying to crack at the moment. Too many
lawsuits of people trying to monetize Apple products.

Lastly: Mighty is an excellent move. The macro shift toward cloud-native makes
browser-based tools more pervasive. You're well-positioned with Chrome, mate.

~~~
GordonS
> user-dedicated EC2 instances

Ouch, that sounds expensive! I would imagine the economics of this will be a
tough sell compared to one's own laptop or desktop?

------
choeger
A bit of advice: remote desktops suck for professional developers. A
workstation is more than just the software and OS. For me it already sucks to
switch from standalone screen to the laptop. You also won't be able to support
all the different use cases well.

My advise is to focus on one particular workflow (say vscode with Js) and
perfect that one.

~~~
edunteman
Thanks for the critical yet constructive feedback!

The product currently available is a full-fledged remote desktop, forcing you
to switch back and forth, which can certainly be sucky.

The plan is to make the remote-hosted apps pop up as a window on your local
machine, as if it were running locally, when really it's hosted and ran on a
cloud VM. I want the apps (VSCode, for example) to seem completely local.

Would this better accommodate your personal workflow?

------
phonon
How is this different than
[https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/)

~~~
jnwatson
Perhaps app license management?

~~~
edunteman
It's a direction I've considered (bundling and distributing licenses in a
compliant way), but for the next year I'd rather build out the tech and UX,
with a simple "Bring Your Own License" approach.

------
wayoutthere
Wasn't this called Citrix back in the 90s?

~~~
edunteman
Exactly. The tech is nothing new. I'm moreso consumerizing the Citrix tech,
which has historically been enterprise-focused.

It's an amazing tech and just needs to be packaged up in a non-intimidating,
non-intrusive way for laymen to use.

------
TravisLS
I would love love love if this gave me a way to run Photoshop or other Win/Mac
only apps from my Linux laptop. Let us request Ubuntu!

(Although millstone's comment makes me wary to suggest you do anything with
Adobe's software...might want to be careful there)

~~~
edunteman
Millstone made an excellent point. I'm currently doing a Bring Your Own
License model, which complies with your current Adobe license.

Email me at erik@booste.io - I can have an Ubuntu version packaged up for you
within a week.

------
edunteman
Thanks, HN for all of the signups, critique, and feedback! This my first
posting here; I learned a lot in the last day, and grew the product far more
than expected.

I'd like to broadly respond to the many positive and negative comments made in
this post.

Product definition: \-- Booste is currently a tool to spin up a full-fledged
remote desktop. You access it via a third party RDP client. The full product
vision is to make individual apps run remotely, yet seem local. Primary use
cases, learned here, emphasize the need for cross-platform access and
flexibility. Surprising learnings include a de-emphasis on the device cost-
savings.

Product maturity: \-- Booste is an MVP, built entirely by me over two months.
My intent of this post was not to mislead with large promises, but to assess
interest in the value proposition so that I make something people want. The
comments, new user signups, and feature requests have been strong validation
of this. Now, there's building to be done!

Product distribution: \-- The initial build, launched here, had infrastructure
and security components that did not scale. Following valid complaints, I've
temporarily replaced the direct-download on the site with an email waitlist,
so that incoming interested users can get access in the near future.

This was great. Cheers, all. Please contact me at erik@booste.io with any and
all thoughts around this.

------
tomstoms
I would not trust a product from someone who doesn’t know how to put ssl in
front of a website.

~~~
edunteman
Noted!

------
sdan
Love the idea. Suhail is doing something similar with Mighty (check it out if
you haven't already). Not sure how you're streaming stuff like Adobe and
Blender products, but I like the idea and I think this has some potential.

Speaking of things in the cloud, I wrote a small thread about the pros and
cons if everything is in the cloud (mainly inspired by Mighty):

[https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud](https://sdan.xyz/essaycloud)

~~~
rock_artist
One big con for cloud and software as a service (I didn't see it mentioned in
your post, maybe I've missed it) -

Being a terminal machine, you don't own or hold anything.

The Adobe Venezuela case is a good example for that. So if booste.io needs to
comply to some regulation it might break those users ability to access their
data.

It is a growing concern as the terminal/main-frame days are getting back at
us.

~~~
sdan
This too. Overtime I think more and more games/services may adapt to this
"everything in the cloud" idea and eventually support it w/ their own licenses
and whatnot.

Other than that, I've said how the cloud is like a terminal machine (as you've
said). Once it's gone, you're left with on-device things to do now... which is
a huge con, but there are some pros as I've described in the post. But given
the number of pros and cons for both cloud and on-device, it's a hard
decision/strategy to make up on what a company is going to do.

------
mikenew
If you can give me a way to do iOS development remotely without needing a mac
I'll throw money at you.

~~~
shantly
There's a bunch of stuff like this:

[https://www.macincloud.com](https://www.macincloud.com)

Does that not do what you need?

~~~
GordonS
I used a MacInCloud server as a build server for iOS apps for something like 3
years, and it was a good experience. The server was performant and totally
stable, and the one time I contacted support about a billing issue, it was
resolved quickly and professionally.

Recommended. Only reason I don't use it anymore is that Azure DevOps now
offers MacOS build agents.

------
woah
Why not offer 2 minute trial sessions? I don't feel like signing up just to
try this.

~~~
edunteman
Thanks for the suggestion, and especially for the insight that the signup is a
sticking point.

It'd take some rearchitecting to offer trial sessions in that way, but if this
project gains momentum, we'll find a way to offer trials without signup, to
reduce friction.

------
kevsim
Is VS Code really a “slow AF” app for people? I have my gripes, but I
generally find it relatively snappy.

~~~
edunteman
Testing out the markets :)

I actually never expected to support VS Code or any dev tools at all! Launched
on Product Hunt a month ago targeting 3D design and animation markets. Yet
strangely, 25% of my inbounds were directly requesting VS Code, so apparently
there's a need.

------
mkoryak
Serious question:

Does your website say that "Booste runs your slow _as fuck_ apps for you." ??

~~~
edunteman
Yes. You did not misread - "Slow AF Apps" \- it was an intent to capture user
pains and seem human.

Judging by your response, it was not in good taste. Curious to anyone else
reading this: is a statement like that offputting?

~~~
danpalmer
This comment made me change my mind from:

"this is an early stage product I might consider using", to...

"this is a weekend hobby project hacked together that I should definitely not
pay for or depend on for anything business related".

Some companies can pull off the very human feel, but it takes a lot of effort
to do well without trashing a brand.

~~~
edunteman
Thanks for letting me into your thought process there.

------
personjerry
How can it be practical to code on my phone without a real keyboard?

~~~
edunteman
Some engineers have told me they'd like to change code on the fly (emergency
situations). This product definitely leans toward small laptop and tablet use
cases, but if the push for phone support arises, I'll build out what I can!

------
sturza
I hoped i could run this in a browser

~~~
edunteman
It's a consideration. Certainly more portable. Thanks for letting me know it's
of interest!

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Just as a possibly-useful reference:
[https://guacamole.apache.org/](https://guacamole.apache.org/)

------
sequoiar6868
good idea. I have built a desktop cloud before.

