Dev boots a PC from Google Drive cloud storage — a storage-less laptop becomes a truly cloud-native computer
Dev boots a PC from Google Drive cloud storage — a storage-less laptop becomes a truly cloud-native computer
Apparently, the Linux boot is slow, but the 'possibilities are endless.'
Ersei, the developer behind this so-called Cloud Native Computer, says the project was primarily a “silly” pursuit. There is also a problem with booting from Google Drive currently being very slow. 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.
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."
Wow this sounds useless. Congratulations or whatever.
Soo, booting your computer from someone else's computer?
I mean we've had thin clients and PXE for ages?
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.
More being able to use cloud storage and not need a full physical secondary computer. In theory the cloud can be accessed anywhere, even if a portion is down, not the same for a single physical PC.
So they reinvented terminals, but worse
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
the thing that gets me is that said dev tried it first with amazon S3 and it worked infinitely better there
Probably a bit more expensive though, depending how much storage you need.
Reminds me of the image macro about using drive as your swap
Permanently Deleted
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.
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
Netboot.xyz ?
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.
So we’re back to
PXIPXE? Everything old is new again.Neat technical problem to solve though just for fun
Was gonna say. Has no-one heard of diskless boot (PXE on x86).
I've done it in the past with OpenBSD: https://man.openbsd.org/diskless
I set up a PXE image for the Arch installer and scripted the whole installation. The idea was to switch the boot order and have it auto-reimage, such as for a IOT device deploy.
Once I built it, I never used it again. But it was a fun afternoon.
y tho
“Primarily a silly pursuit”
funny