

Bringing back the PC - ibrad
http://idiallo.com/blog/2014/05/bringing-back-the-pc

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ivan_ah
The personal cloud built on FOSS is a very nice idea. We need this real bad.

I think the technological complexity of implementing this is quite serious---
setting this up for the average non-technical person would be an impossible
task. If we can get past the Dynamic DNS + opening ports on the home router,
this will be immediately useful. Then again maybe "my personal cloud" could be
on AWS to begin with, see [1].

Are there any efforts for the "personal cloud" platforms that have traction?
I'm interested particularly for easy-to-use ones---possibly focussing on a
single application, e.g., share pictures with your family from the old PC in
your closet.

[1] [http://minireference.com/blog/a-scriptable-future-for-the-
we...](http://minireference.com/blog/a-scriptable-future-for-the-web-and-home-
servers/)

~~~
buckbova
For non-technical folks this is pretty difficult.

The average person can purchase an off the shelf personal cloud and probably
get somewhere with storing and accessing files but going beyond that requires
help.

As a test I set up owncloud and personal email on a digital ocean droplet just
last night on their lowest tier. So far so good. But it needs some help on the
user friendly aspects, like sharing a photo gallery.

~~~
scarecrowbob
I'm pretty non-savvy about servers, but I have been trying to learn ansible,
and at the same time I wanted to consolidate some personal servers, so I used
this to deploy more-or-less the same thing on DO the other day:

[https://github.com/al3x/sovereign](https://github.com/al3x/sovereign)

My experience was that it wasn't impossible, and faster than spinning up a
postfix/dovecot server by hand... but it was really buggy and lots of little
problems. As far as I could tell, there were some problems using the encfs
with the kernal DO uses, and that took a lot of troubleshooting.

I am thinking that at some point there will be a setup that is as easy as,
say, spinning out a wordpress site on shared hosting.

------
danelectro
Back in the late '90's I thought lots of aspiring computer scientists were
already using Windows or Linux as they VPN'd from their remote laptop back to
home so they could access their personal files and full desktop through VNC.
Not much differently than people would do on a commercial scale to their
company network when they were away. Mainly dial-up except for the few who had
broadband.

I was too preoccupied with natural science, but by 2003 I got a cellphone
containing a regular USB GSM modem and would use that plugged in to my laptop
to log in to my own desktop PC network using dial-up my dang self. From
anywhere having cellular service, no need for a wireless data plan which was
not available in most coverage areas anyway. Was good to have a nationwide
calling plan which most people did not have either, and it still used up
minutes of your monthly allowance.

No FOSS on the laptop back then for me usually, but if you had broadband at a
remote location too, Windows XP had everything you needed to VPN back to a
regular home Linksys router which normally contained its own VPN endpoint in
those days with a new service called DynDNS already preconfigured in the
router's firmware. Too bad DynDNS is not free any more but with the router
handling VPN, you could still access a home network that was barebones
Windows9x, Linux, even DOS.

No need for software, just common hardware and regular Windows features.

Unless you wanted the automated "Assistant" type stuff like in the article,
then you would need software, regular users would never call it apps.

Later once 3G wireless arrived, I got a phone supporting that and could get
better speeds (when available) than dial-up, and without even needing the
laptop when I just wanted convenient recreational use on the small-screen.
Never did want to lose the regular dial-up cell modem from my toolbox though,
but a number of years ago Tmobile walled it off. So much for Plan B when there
is no 4G, which is still not everywhere. Plus, no faxing for you[1] directly
from a laptop through a cellphone any more, without having to go through a web
service. Clouds got in my way.

[1] I realize now the '80's called and they want their facsimile machine back,
but I was out of tape on my telephone answering machine ;-)

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mmphosis
I like the ideas in this article.

Rather than the big footprint whitebox/blackbox from PC 1.0, instead I imagine
PC 2.0 being a very small board, no fans, no spinning drives but having very
fast CPUs and GPUs driving big monitors.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop) Or,
the very fast CPUs and GPUs with or without fans would hide quietly away in a
closet but with a connector hub on my desk. It could draw a lot of power if
required. It would be like an iMac, but with an open and modular PC 2.0 board
that is separate from the big dumb monitor(s).

Rather than UEFI or UEFI-like so-called "secure" boot, instead PC 2.0 would be
instantly on, and support virtual "smart" bootloaders as an option. So without
a config card (swipe or whatever), it would default to turning on instantly.
With a previously used config card it would turn on instantly using that
previous configuration. For any new config card to would actually "boot" up
the new configuration and create a new "instant on" configuration. There would
be options to backup and remove old configurations, and to set the default
instant on configuration. Sort of like Virtual Box snapshots, but using
hardware for the snapshots to actually make the computer "instantly" turn on.

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jacquesm
Super nice article. In some ways a next step compared to 'The Mother Of All
Demos', in some ways a step back. But still quite neat.

One thing all those 'always on' devices could use their unused cycles for is
to create things like federated search engines, peer-to-peer encrypted backups
(for instance, seed a torrent of your own encrypted data with a key only you
know, boot your 'assistant' afresh and the first thing it could ask you is to
restore from some torrent).

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computerslol
I am totally behind the spirit of your article. I also believe it's a travesty
that we have so much power that can be attained so cheaply, yet we aren't
using it at home.

