This is a good idea. By default the web browser would block this due to the same origin policy. However this can be turned off in most browsers but it might seem fishy to some users. The user would also need to remember to turn back on the same origin policy in their browser when they are done using Instant Workstation.
So in short this is probably possible but inconvenient for the user. Alternatively internet use could be enabled for a fee. This would deter crypto miners, spammers, torrent seeders, etc. Perhaps in the future both options could be offered, i.e. you can have internet for free if you let the virtual machine use your ownās internet connection OR you can pay a fee and the virtual machine uses Instant Workstationās internet connection for internet connectivity.
Asking users to change their browser settings,especially expert stuff hidden behind about:config,probably isnāt the best idea.
What about using Tor or some VPN for outgoing connections of the VMs?
Then you can offer internet connection without fishy hacks and you canāt be held responsible for whatever users do on their VMs.
Tor is free and while sometimes a bit slow,itās still better than not having internet at all.
VPNs are paid,but sometimes you can get unlimited traffic for 10$/month or something like that.
That is true, especially considering that Instant Workstation is also aimed at non-technical users.
Thanks for this suggestion, that is another option, use a VPN or Tor to connect the virtual machines to the internet.
That still leaves the virtual machines vulnerable to exploitation by crypto miners and spammers etc. However perhaps a fair usage policy could be implemented.
Iām about as far away from Europe as you can get, so that makes sense.
Does anyone know whether Haiku supports absolute pointers (such as touchscreens)? I wonder whether the mouse pointer can be rendered locally in the browser and then sent as absolute coordinates when actually clicked. This would avoid constant round trips (at the expense of always showing the default pointer sprite and not working with apps that ālookā at the mouse even when the buttons arenāt being pressed).
Haiku supports using your webrowser as an application server, the mouse is then the native mouse, and the only thing the haiku instance sends you are drawing instructions for the window, not a video stream in itself.
Haiku R1 Alpha 4 (from 2012) has been added to instantworkstation.com. When you now select Haiku on the site you get to choose from two versions of the OS:
Why would you want to add (or use, for that matter) a nearly 12 year old alpha version? Unless itās for historic reasons. Of course itās your system and you can do what you want but I was just wonderingā¦
Essentially, they have a websocket proxy that tunnels the connection from the in-browser emulator.
Something like this opens up two options:
double-proxy, by bouncing that proxy across the browser instance to the IWS host
single-proxy, by running a local proxy service independent of the browser, and having IWS use that as a tunnel
Also, introducing a fee model puts you in the questionable and unenviable position of being, essentially, a paid VPN provider. Thatās a lot of trouble, hence why companies like Proton and Mullvad are very careful about where they operate from, how they handle customer data, and how they handle payment.
@BlueSky The purpose for adding older versions is to compare to newer versions. One of the use cases of Intant Workstation is to perhaps use it like a museum of operating systems.
Is anyone able to mount the SMB share on the Haiku machine on Instant Workstation? There is an SMB share located at //10.0.2.4/qemu but I cannot access it from within the Haiku guest. This share is accessible from some other guests on Instant Workstation such as the Linux distributions.
I enabled the SMB client in the Haiku network preferences. Using the smbclient to try and access the network share always results in the error:
I tried setting āmin protocol = NT1ā in /etc/samba/smb.conf on the host but this did not help. Have also tried āmin protocol COREā but this yielded the same result.
This issue is now resolved. The fonts are now self-hosted and not downloaded from Google anymore. Thanks for this suggestion.
There have also been a few other updates of the site recently:
The site works much better on mobile devices and small screens now
The thumbnails have been reduced in size for improved loading speed
More OSes have been added
Persistent cookies are now set to remember peopleās authentication and consent status. So you donāt have to login repeatedly or consent repeatedly anymore.
Cloudflare Turnstile is now used on the site to prevent bots from wasting resources. Unfortunately despite having relatively low traffic attempts have been made to abuse the site making this kind of protection necessary.
With recent updates,I like the site even more
The selection of OSes is really great,not just the boring mainstream Linuxes,but almost every small but amazing project I can think of.
Even OpenIndiana is available,my second-favorite OS after Haiku,which I actually use a lot more.
And it finally gives me the chance to try some niche stuff like TempleOS, or ReactOS which I didnāt manage to boot on real hardware for quite some time.
The TLS certificate issues mentioned in this thread should now be resolved.
Internet access in virtual machines is now available for a fee of ā¬0.25 per hour.
Furthermore a limited amount of ARM virtual machines are now available. Naturally there is no ARM build of Haiku however I am currently working on adding RISC-V virtual machines to the site. Since there is a RISC-V build of Haiku it is planned to be added to the site.
