Moka5 LivePCs - Wave of future Software Distribution and Portability - Smart - Search

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Moka5 LivePCs - Wave of future Software Distribution and Portability

This is one way to take about a week of your life out - get too interested with both interesting applications and a whole new paradyne for future computing...... It all started off looking for better environments to do software testing... where it ended up was about a week, getting to know in depth, the ins and outs of of virtualization (ala 'players' that seem more interesting than VMWare client emulators) and linux to the multiple versions of windows.

Most people will just find the application themselves and their portability appealing. But there is also a much bigger picture (and a very tough challenge for software licensing) in play.....

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Moka5 has created a new vision for both:

Safe, instant, managed 'computers' on a pc or USB stick
A new Software distribution paradyne balancing the benefits of desktop functionality with server-side consolidation

Windows and Linux virtual computers on the Go and on the Web.

Essentially, they've taken the concept of the 'virtual pc', VMWare's 'Player' (vs. VMWare Client-Server), and Linux or Windows to create virtual environments called 'LivePCs'.

For the desktop user, this creates a way run applications locally that are safe, because they run in a completely isolated boot up environent and without additional mapping, cannot affect any of the existing data on your computer. Typically, this means you have Internet access, and access to network resources and external drives.

While a LivePC can host the same copy of Windows XP Pro (or Vista), and contain any windows applications in that environment, it can also host any current Linux distro OS along with applications for that environment.

All LivePCs are based on having been downloaded (distributed) from some server on the Internet, and upon starting the Moka menu, all applications has the option to updated by the hosting copy of the application - this is very quick only updating changes. Optionally, the application can run remotely (standalone) and also not get updated.

LivePCs can be run on your desktop, or be portably run on most USB devices including USB sticks and iPods. Portable applications on USB devices autoboot into the Moka LivePC menu when plugged into any USB slot of a remote computer, using that computers' remote peripherals but without seeing the hard drive.

Currently available (published) LivePCs include but are not limited to:

Browsers with email,
Office-togo,
Quake,
LAMP environment(s)
Gimp graphical editor

New LivePCs can be:

Downloaded from Internet servers (for most users)
'Created' simply modifying an existing LivePC - just using it, OR 'republishing it' (re-distributing) on any host
Created by loading your own OS and applications - it starts with a emulation of an empty hard disk ready to load Windows XP or a Linux distro.

The framework for this is ~25 mgbs of VMWare's free Player environment (hosting-shell vs. emulation) and ~114 mgb of Moka's code that manages everything. On the other hand, the size of the distributed app is not a download drain - streaming, many can be started before being fully downloaded.

The overall Moka5's framework stands to potentially become important for corporate as well as general software distribution in the future. It's all about Internet based applications (assessable but optionally run remotely after downloading), automated and streaming distribution of updates, and the ability to more easily create new distributions.

Software distribution and management of the future...

PostNote: Microsoft Virtual PC is now a free offering also - and although not so portable, it performs all versions of full Windows emulations - vers 3.1 to 9x to NT/2000 to WinXP. This is real emulation starting from the fdisk and formatting, unlike Windows compatibility. This allows you to run the many programs that only ran in those environments