Author Topic: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?  (Read 747 times)

David Kiley

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So I had a crazy idea of renting a windows dedicated server to serve as a winflector server to try to solve the web browser problem.
The advantage of that is you can run arcaos natively then and still access the modern browsers via our remote winflector server.
(instead of running os/2 in virtualbox and using your own copy of windows).
Also people that don't want a copy of windows for themselves wouldn't have to provide it since we would be providing the windows environment for you, and it would also be easy and convenient to use for anyone that is interested.

I was thinking to cost would be in the $13-$15 a month range - haven't had a chance to nail that down yet. Unfortunately dedicated servers for windows are pricy so i'm not looking to make much from it.

Anyways, anyone interested or is this a dead end idea?
If you are interested i've setup a funding page to secure your seat, so we can know how many people are committed to it and we know how many licenses to buy. It would include 3 months of free service to anyone that signs up.
https://www.syncpedia.com/winflector/112-reserve-your-seat-for-os-2-winflector-hosting.html

The total cost would come to $47.46 per seat currently.

Also, in addition to web browsers we could install a bunch of other windows software like office suites, email cliensts, ftp clients etc possibly.

Anyways, let me know what you think!







David Kiley

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2026, 12:07:46 am »
Actually .thinking about it more..it will include 6 months free hosting so it's a clear value to sign up early. Haven't had a chance to update the site yet but consider that the deal.

Let me know your thoughts.

David Kiley

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2026, 12:40:51 am »
I'm getting ahead of myself but just realized my site only has USA as a country currently. But you can just put USA as the country and leave the actually country in the comments.. or send a PayPal to superservice@syncpedia.com if interested

JTA

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2026, 03:47:29 pm »
Another innovative use of Winflector, to solve OS/2 problems (no native modern browser, no 64-bit apps, etc) ... nice!

Please keep us posted on your efforts ... they are appreciated!

I use Winflector natively, everything on a single physical box, but perhaps your solution offers benefits to those in need of cloud versions of Winflector, Windows, etc. in an OS/2 environment.

Again, very innovative use of all the tools in the toolbox ...

David Kiley

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2026, 11:31:38 pm »
Another innovative use of Winflector, to solve OS/2 problems (no native modern browser, no 64-bit apps, etc) ... nice!

Please keep us posted on your efforts ... they are appreciated!

I use Winflector natively, everything on a single physical box, but perhaps your solution offers benefits to those in need of cloud versions of Winflector, Windows, etc. in an OS/2 environment.

Again, very innovative use of all the tools in the toolbox ...

Thanks for the support. I'm mulling it over. From the lack of replies so far i'm not sure the community is that interested. And it will be a big investment to start it which is why I was hoping people could help with securing "seats" in advance in exchange for the 6 free months.
But.. I might still proceed without that since I can also market it to linux and mac folks.
Thinking it over.

JTA

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2026, 01:00:27 am »
I'm not sure, but it seems like it takes time for everyone to find a thread ... if you go by thread view counts, some stay low, and some surge into the 10's of 1000's.

Also not sure of the actual user base (seat) count ... I'd think Arca Noae has a handle on how many seats they've sold, and perhaps someone from EComStation time frame has rough seat numbers for their OS. Finally, it seems like OS/2 Warp (4.xx) had quite a few seats, and can benefit from Winflector solutions.
 
All told, my estimates are about 25k to 100k, but I have no way to nail it down ... it would possibly be useful to nail it down, and pass it to Winflector folks, to build up interest for an OS/2 client.

Certainly, there are still millions of 32-bit OS users out there (windows 7 and XP, linux distros, etc). If OS/2 is a better windows than most windows variants, some of these seats could possibly be brought into the fold?

How to get hold of any of those seats, other than by marketing? Perhaps with AN (you would think that they might participate, for their customers), with BlondGuy and others, and elsewhere. Build it, and they might come ...

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2026, 03:25:01 pm »
Hello David!

So I had a crazy idea of renting a windows dedicated server to serve as a winflector server to try to solve the web browser problem.
...
Anyways, anyone interested or is this a dead end idea?
...

So here is my response while wearing the Corporate IT Hat:

1) SECURITY
Before anyone signs up for this kind of a service you need to very precisely spell out how the security aspect of MY data residing on YOUR server is going to play out. By that statement I do NOT just mean "is my data secure?" as if it were in it's own cloud hosted server...you need to account for the fact that multiple user IDs would now exist on the same box and therefore you'd also need to account for how that segregation is to be accomplished.

2) PLATFORM
#1 above assumes a single server, is that indeed what you are thinking? How about looking at any of the cloud platform services, purchasing compute & storage credits which are then applied to UNIQUE VMs that host user specific environments?

You see, this approach, while I suspect more costly due to underlying OS licensing requirements, would certainly account for a lot of the SECURITY worries. After all, each and every time I connect to run one of these remote apps i'm essentially logging into my very own hosted VM environment.

3) PERFORMANCE
There is a big difference in implementing this within your LAN vs such remote configuration as what you propose. I would want to prove this out first so the sort of usage people are expecting to see (say YouTube access) can in fact be facilitatted.

Regardless of whichever approach you pursue in #2 above, the speed at which that remote session is instantiated would play a big role in how "happy" the end user is. After all, if it takes me 1-2 mins to spin up a remote FF window, and even then I can't honestly use it to browse my favourite YouTube channels (just a use-case here LOL), then is it really worth it to me?

In other words, we should define real use-cases and spell out what the end-user expectations are going to be met by each one.

4) APPLICATIONS
Is the intent to create a blank-slate remote OS platform which each user then adjusts to his/her liking? I think this is largely driven by the PLATFORM approach you decide to pursue. If we are all in a single virtual box, how do you know manage the application configuration?

Are we all permitted to install our own Apps? Oh, but you need Admin access for that?...sooo, do I get that Admin access (hell NO, b/c then you open up everyone else's data to my inspection), or do you exclusively own the Admin role and work through the AppInstall queue requests???

OK, now from the end-user perspective: I do think this approach could work if you were to really scope this down and perhaps just establish a package of 1-3 Apps that are accessible through such a service. Would this still be enough to entice folks to pay $15/month? Hard to tell...

Corollary: this proposal is a perfect example of whee an established business (AN) could step-in and put their weight behind this. Given my experience in the corporate cloud procurement space I am comfortable saying that economies of scale apply and based on who the licensing request comes from will dictate how that conversation plays out.

David Kiley

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2026, 09:18:38 pm »
Thanks for the feedback. It gave me a lot to think about. Fortunately winflector has a lot of built in security. I'm still testing it but here is a list of built in controls:

Isolated Application View:
Unlike Remote Desktop Services (RDS), which share the entire desktop, Winflector only
presents the windows of the specific application, limiting user interference with the server's environment.
Independent

User Accounts: Winflector allows the creation of user accounts that are independent of Windows user accounts.

Resource and App Access Control: Administrators can define which applications specific users can access.
Virtualization: Winflector uses kernel name virtualization to prevent conflicts between different users running the same application, ensuring that each instance acts as if it is in its own user space.

I have a lot of experience with server hardening.. so I am working on that now.
I purchased a server so it looks like I'm going ahead with it. I will probably only buy limited seats to start though in case no one wants it lol.

David Kiley

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Re: Interested in a remote winflector/ web browser hosting service?
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2026, 09:20:28 pm »
And yes there are definite limitations like YouTube as you mentioned. So we will see if I can build it with enough value to still make it worth using.

I'm looking into bundling others apps like office suites ftp etc. But Microsoft charges through the nose for a multi user office suite so probably not them
« Last Edit: Today at 02:14:54 am by David Kiley »