Now you can run Ubuntu with Xfce in a browsers
Everyone is aware of the web browser, Linux particularly since the maker of Ubuntu Linux, Canonical has created an online tour of their computer operating system, which the users can always try at https://tour.ubuntu.com/en/ for free.
However, there is new startup called Icebergs, which provides a new cloud-based service that runs a traditional Xfce desktop environment on top of Ubuntu Linux. Currently, it is based on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (Trusty Tahr), running Linux kernel 3.13.
It offers users with a full and complete desktop environment, as everything is written in HTML5. The users can also install the software they need, as it provides them root (system administrator) access.
If you wish to focus on your current session, you have the option of a full screen option that doesn’t require you to stay in a tab all the time.
Several paid plans and a free one are provided by Icebergs that won’t save your sessions.
The free plan that had the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, version 41.0 was tried by Softpedia. On trial, it was found that the speed was not impressive and the entire thing was running very slow, which gets slightly annoying after a few minutes.
How does the Icebergs’ offering works
New sessions are created in real time and if you are on the free plan where nothing is saved, it approximately takes two or three minutes to start for the first time. You need to click on the “Open Desktop” button to start it, after a session has been created.
As stated earlier, Icebergs has a few paid plans, starting from $9.99/month for 25 hours of usage per month, two instances, and 8GB storage per instance. The most expensive plan costs $59.99/month for 16 instances and 750 compute hours, with the same 8GB of storage per instance.
The free plan, on the other hand, provides you only two hours per month with a single instance and no storage. However, if you do not like their services, you can cancel it any time, which is the best part about the plan.
You can try Icebergs’ service at https://icebergs.io/.
