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Summary - Making a Web browser that acts as your computer's complete interface and operating system has long been many vendors' unrealized dream. While some, such as Microsoft, have brought Web functionality to the desktop, none has come quite so close as SCO with its recent release of Tarantella. Rawn loads it on his Sun Ultra 10 and gives his take on its capabilities -- and limitations.(2,800 words)
Years ago, Netscape's dream was to make its Web browser the completeinterface and operating system for the desktop computer. The ideawas simple: make applications on the Net indistinguishable fromlocal applications. It was a concept similar to Sun Microsystems'smantra, "The network is the computer" -- and was a bit far-fetched,given the emergence of Microsoft as the major software superpower.And it was Microsoft, of course, that went on to produce InternetExplorer 4 and Windows 98, software that added Web functionalitydirectly to the Windows desktop.
Yet these products merely grant access to the same applications theOS itself gives you. A number of companies, including Citrix,Microsoft, and NCD, have attempted to realize Netscape's goal intheir thin-client application server products, with moderatesuccess. Citrix's WinFrame and MetaFrame products are still theleaders, although Microsoft is catching up. Other vendors from theWeb application server and Web portal fronts have developed productsthat access applications running on a centralized Web server; butwhen it comes to management and Unix access, they don't beat theensemble SCO has created with Tarantella.
SCO is marketing Tarantella as a way to build an enterprise portalfor your intranet, but I see it as more than that. Tarantella canprovide a powerful clusteringmethodology that is independent of any particular variety of OS or server hardware. By providing access to Unix and Windows accounts at thesame time, it's suitable for Internet kiosks and extranet services.In this review, I'll look at the various elements of the Tarantellasystem, then identify the few missing components of this otherwiseelegant computing architecture.
What is a Webtop?
Tarantella is a true Webtop -- all its applications are accessibledirectly through the Web browser to users in any location, as longas there is a route between the two machines. Thus, users may roamabout from computer to computer within the company, or even accessTarantella from home or elsewhere, just as they would from their...