XIN is a service like YouOS, eyeOS or WadgetOS. It is, put simply, an AJAX-based web operating system.
Personally, I have never before used WadgetOS, YouOS or eyeOS - but when I saw a service with such a long title on del.icio.us, I couldn’t resist!
Remote-based computers are nothing new, Telnet and such are ancient, but AJAX-operating systems are fairly new.
In my opinion, AJAX operating systems will never become dominant as they require a newish browser which will probably only run on Linux/Windows/mac. Systems like Telnet can run on a console! Though, I see that someone on the go may find an AJAX desktop good as it’d run on most public computers. However, I’d much rather carry a PDA or notebook. If I see a bootable AJAX-OS I’d be amazed (it would be possible to have an operating system based around Linux simply comprised off a browser and network drivers.).
Moving away from AJAX operating systems in general to this specific one, I find it nowhere near as fast, efficient or feature-full as eyeOS or YouOS. However, in most ways it better than WadgetOS (not as developable, but it has a GUI!).
XIN has a really nice GUI, which reminds me of some Vista skins, for some reason. But, in my view it doesn’t work as well as other AJAX OSes. The prime reasons for this is that it is very buggy and lacks the ability to add or create other applications.
One bug, for example, is when you save settings, it doesn’t reflect. Another bug is that the fullscreen mode simply doesn’t work. The OS still has some good software; such as a word processor, email client, RSS reader, calculator, chess game, and a calender. I dislike the browser, as it is Bitty and many pages are rendered like they are on a phone. Apparently this can be changed, and Bitty has more features, such as RSS parsing.
The interface is really promising, and if more features are given to developers and the above bugs are fixed it promises to be promising. 
Technical details are here.
Update: The above page has details on developing apps. However, there is no app directory with an installer.
Tags: AJAX, web 2.0, web-20, web2.0, web20, AJAX, webos, web os, os, operating systems, operating system
Hi, it’s actually quite simple to create your own applications.
The documentation is found here: http://www.naltabyte.se/howto.htm and you only need to save the app in the ‘apps’ folder to have it included in the apps menu.
WOW looks amazing!Any way I can get the interface without the OS
Mikael: Updated
Azhar: No
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[...] At this point web-based “operating systems” have to fight seemingly insurmountable odds to really work well. There are limits in the codebase (choosing JavaScript versus Flash, or a combo of both, results in a few compromises). There are limits within the browser itself (can’t save if the window gets closed, or if the connection goes south). But that’s not stopping people from trying. Webby’s World has a little blurb about some of these attempts, and mentions a relative newcomer: XIN. I’ve been playing with Goowy for a while now and find it amusing and useful, not to mention getting better all the time. It’s only a matter of time and maturity before the best of these are either acquired or get swept up in a MySpace-esque social vector. Anyone got a particular favorite in this race of could be’s? To me they are like fancy cars- nice to look at, but not practical for driving to work every day. [...]
Is there such a thing opensource?
I hear a lot of people talking about Ajax. it sounds like an interesting language. Of course I hear a lot of people talking about Ruby. They swear it is a great language. I’m still trying to get my head around php. So many languages, and so little time.