I’ve tried setting up and using Solid over the last few years and I’ve never gotten around even the basic browsing and tinkering with the default browser. I tried using Penny today and it was such a pleasant experience. I was even able to change the permission for a particular resource and test if it works.
Wondering if we can make it the default file browser? i.e recommend that the Community Solid Server gets shipped with Penny built-in.
Penny is a great app for managing the files on Solid server as if they were on any server. The “default browser” is difficult to learn and could use a more polished interface. However it is more than a browser, it is an interconnected series of apps - chats, task lists, profile and contacts managers and more. That’s why we are calling it SolidOS - it’s more than a browser, it’s an operating system. And it navigates semantically - lets you either follow hierarchical folder paths (which Penny excels at) or follow semantic links in the files themselves (which Penny can’t do).
So yes, I get it that Penny is friendlier. But SolidOS is, in the long term, where we want to go. It’s like comparing a shiny new bicycle with an unpainted car with lots of dents and an engine that can take you to the moon. The bike is fine for tooling around town. It is not good at carrying things or going long distances.
SolidOS is in continual development, there are dozens if not hundreds of PRs in the last month. Sir Tim is directly involved in development. SolidOS may be ugly and hard to learn, but you can help change that by submitting issues if you find problems or submitting PRs if you have solutions or writing tutorials to help onboard others.
Thank you Jeff. I wasn’t aware of all the nuanced features that the default browser supported.
Looking forward to SolidOS.