GOS (operating System) - Design

Design

gOS-1 was based on the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution (later versions after 2.9 use version 8.04) and themed desktop environment somewhat similar in appearance to Mac OS X Leopard. The earlier versions (1 and 2-beta) used the Enlightenment 17 window manager instead of the usual GNOME or KDE desktops, to create a desktop that had a similar appearance to Mac OS X. Enlightenment acted both as an X window manager and a desktop environment. Therefore early versions of gOS worked on systems as low end as a 350 MHz Pentium II with 196 MB of RAM, but a typical gOS system would have used as a minimum a 1 GHz Pentium III with 256 MB RAM. After gOS2-beta the later versions of gOS abandoned the use of Enlightenment as desktop manager (although some E17 code still seemed to be used), in favor of using GNOME, with Compiz Fusion and the Avant Window Navigator. This increased the need for memory to values similar to normal Ubuntu.

Based on the idea of cloud computing, all versions of gOS lean heavily on on-line applications built on Web 2.0 and AJAX technology so they also do not use much hard disk space for applications. The whole gOS-1 system fitted comfortably in less than 2 GB. Also many of the documents created with gOS, such as Google Docs documents, can be saved on Google servers instead of on the local hard disk, so gOS can work with very small hard disks. In gOS V2 Rocket, Good OS introduced the use of Google's "Google Gears" technology which promises to make Google's web applications usable without an Internet connection. Currently, Google Reader and Google Docs are the only supported Google applications, though other web applications such as Remember the Milk have added Google Gears functionality.

gOS 2.0 Rocket's primary features include a Mac OS X-like Dock called "the Launcher" (using Avant Window Navigator in gOS Rocket G and gOS Space, and iTask-NG in gOS Rocket E), containing icons to launch programs like the Firefox web browser, Rhythmbox audio player, Xine video player, and Skype for Internet telephony. There are also options to open many Google-based web application like Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Maps. Other programs could be added to the Launcher as well. The first E17 based version of gOS used another Dock-style interface called the iBar.

Other installed programs could be started through menus, among the most important was the photo and picture editing program the GIMP, the document viewer Evince, and the OpenOffice.org office suite. More programs could be installed using the built-in Synaptic Package Manager.