Operating System
The Project
Links is a unified open source project, organized through new standards and methodologies, to create a new, deeply innovative consumer operating system environment, both for computers and other devices. It departs from its Linux roots with a carefully crafted and complex new computer ecosystem and tool set, and is polished off with a striking new user interface. We hope Links will change the way we see and use computers, forever.
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Below, you'll see the major parts of the project - first the features, and then the goals or ideals we're striving for.
Innovations & Features
Some parts of what we're doing are innovations that build upon existing technologies.
Others bring tools typically only available to the tech-savvy into the hands of the public -
But even these blossom with small, clever, original ideas in how everything is brought together into a cohesive whole.
And, all of it goes above and beyond the mainstream capabilities and features of our current common systems.
Filing Tree
File Browser
Using an innovative new tree visualization algorithm, Links shows you your files and folders spatially, in a way that is intuitive, memorable, easy to organize, and rapid to navigate.
Panels
Desktop Environment & UI
Panels uses many innovations to change the way you interact with your desktop and programs, drastically altering the old desktop paradigm. It automates some aspects of window management, and even program UI development.
Multiple Interface
Multi-User Capability
Combining multiseat and multi-user configurations, Links makes full use of multiple monitors, keyboards, and pointing devices to open the door for multiple simultaneous users to more naturally collaborate in the same or connected work spaces, and even within programs.
Interconnect
Multi-Machine Interface
Devices can be easily and instantly connected together to allow the movement of files, cursors, and even windows between collaborating devices and users, including remotely.
Usernet
User Data Management
Your user and login exist across multiple machines, with automatically synchronized Filing Tree, open programs, and clipboard. Storage is shared, redundancy is automatic, and you can even share files and windows with other users.
Elemental Graphics
Graphical Rendering Model
Programs in Links are designed and rendered mathematically with vector graphics, and use persistent graphical objects, via a new language and API. This is to improve remote rendering, efficiency, scalability, personalization, intuitiveness, and even driver requirements.
Programs, API, & AI
Tools And Software
Links is different enough that it requires a redesigned suite of software to fill the needs of its users, as well as an API for developing that software. Data flow is standardized in such a way that inter-program communication is simple, and paves the way for a local System-and-Program-AI interface.
Links Core
Kernel & Modules
Links Core is a collection of modules adjusting the Linux Kernel and system, giving Links both the stability of decades of prior work and the flexibility to build upon it. Links intends to bring Linux, finally, fully into the realm of common consumer computing.
More details will be given as we work out the best open rights protections for them, or as we become prepared and organized for community development.
Themes & Ideals
We want to change computing itself.
We want to change how people interact with computers.
And most importantly, we want to change how people interact with each other, through computers.
Connectedness
Inter-HCI
Sociality
We believe there is a need in the world for more human connection. We need healthy sociality - this is true both for our own mental and emotional health, and because of the need for more interdisciplinary collaboration to advance science. Electronic devices often distance us from other people, but since we need technology, this means that we need to improve how we use it. We need better tools for working together with technology - we need tools which connect people, instead of tools which come between people. Multiple Interface and Interconnect are designed to this end.
We believe that when each collaborating user has a separate set of controls, there are more situations in which collaboration is an option, and collaboration itself will become more efficient, more equal, and more communicative than before - whether we're together or apart.
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We would like to call this the field of IHCI, Inter-Human Computer Interaction.
Collaboration
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In addition to connectedness - improving our ability to collaborate - here we would add our intention to be collaborators. We want to bring disparate people and organizations together for the Links project itself, to collaborate with the world to work on something meant for all of us, improving technology for everyone.
Intuitivity & Empowerment
Learnability
User Validation
The best kind of user interface is the kind you don't notice, once it becomes familiar. We are redesigning the desktop interface, in the form of Panels and the Filing Tree, and every program that runs on Links, in an effort to create something new and intuitive, which appears simple, despite its complexity. This kind of learnability is of great importance with such a broad audience as we hope to serve.
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Flexibility can refer to user power, or having a lot of control over the system. Intuitiveness is more or less synonymous with user-friendliness. However, user-friendliness and user power are often considered opposing values when designing user interfaces. We intend to treat this as a false dichotomy, building rich features into the system in a semi-automatic way so that everyone can use them, and those who want to may more specifically control them.
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It is also worth noting that the principle of user validation feels empowering.
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Finally, Links will empower users all around the world by providing free, powerful, stable software features that they never had access to before.
Amorphousness & Ubiquitousness
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These two concepts go together more than one might suppose. Ubiquitous devices occur everywhere. A ubiquitous userspace is accessible anywhere. Amorphous systems don't distinguish between one device and many, and an amorphous userspace is present and accessible on all of them, be they many or few. As these two concepts grow and mature, we find they meet in the middle, in we call the Usernet.
Add to this the capabilities of Multiple Interface and Interconnect, and we create a whole new kind of connectedness - that of you with your data, and your devices, from virtually any other device.
Flexibility & Unity
Standardization
Modularity
Vision
We laud the pure flexibility of Linux, and the incredible advancements it has provided to the software world. However, Linux is fractured into many independent and incompletely compatible projects, and its flexibility is difficult for most people to use - all of which render it unsuitable for most consumers' needs.
In Links, we want to take some of that same flexibility, and temper it with unity. Under a unified open-source project, technological progress might be made much faster, and compatibility and reliability would be much improved. We believe we can accomplish this primarily via a combination of modularity and standardization. If the system is designed to be easily modular, changes made by others are most likely to be accomplished via custom compatible modules rather than via inconsistent changes - and the system will be easier to change, and those changes easier for a wider range of people to use. Hence, Links Core. Further creating a set of standards to govern the inter-compatibility of those modules will encourage compatible changes, as well as improve clarity, and give the whole project vision for where it is intended to go.
Additionally, we would like Links to be an OS for all situations - flexibly unifying and connecting all kinds of devices under a ubiquitous system.
Innovation
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And last of all, one of the major focal points of the Links project is innovation. So much of the virtual environment we're used to has been around for decades. Is that because it's the best way, or is it because we haven't thought outside the box, or can't spare the expense to rebuild from the foundation on up? Links Labs is intent on making innovative improvements, even when they require reinventing the graphics system and refactoring all of the programs. Very few of its features are completely original, but all of them have required extensive innovation to put them together in such powerful new ways.
To learn a little about where these principles are coming from, visit:
How We're Doing It
Links Labs performs research, creates prototypes, assembles the design, and establishes standards, making it a unified head for the various ongoing projects that make up Links as a whole.
We need other companies, organizations, and even individual developers and creators to work with us on those plans and standards, and to take on small pieces of the project that are relevant to their own interests, making open use of our ideas, but in a way that guarantees their continued public availability, and hopefully, a unified direction. This makes Links simultaneously open-sourced and unified, community-driven and vision-oriented.
If you want to be a part of it in any way, don't hesitate to volunteer, sponsor, donate, or to get in contact with us!
"The future is as bright as your faith."