Screenshot of Terminal Lite

Terminal-Lite

Baibhav Gautam
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

The idea is to create a Terminal Mock-Up in the browser. I want users to be able to hop onto Terminal-Lite and allow them to navigate their PCs just like from the regular terminal.

Unlike the native Terminal, Terminal-Lite’s interface will be very user friendly, offer a better GUI experience and have additional functionalities. I want to integrate conveniences such auto completion, in-build help section and tutorials, a large community of users and QA forums, etc to help users comfortably use a powerful tool like the terminal.

Instead of the PC’s native terminal, users will launch Terminal-Lite and they can start typing commands right away. In addition to supporting most of the commands of the native terminal, Terminal-Lite will also support an array of additional functions and conveniences such as:

  1. Setting Reminders
  2. Make and maintain TODO lists
  3. Easily make shortcuts and aliases
  4. Install programs with a few keystrokes
  5. Post on social media
  6. Call an Uber
  7. Send an e-mail or a text-message
  8. Shop on amazon
  9. And much more….

Work in progress:

So far I have a very basic skeleton for Terminal-Lite. Currently it allows users to navigate through a virtual file system. Users can type basic commands such as echo, ls, pwd, cd, mkdir and clear.

In an attempt to read and write from and to users’ file system using client-side JavaScript , I’ve tried to use the Browserify bundler to use the NodeJS’s ‘fs’ module. After much trail and error I’ve found out that it is not possible to access the users’ PC file system using client-side JS. So I need to do some more research to get around the issue.

This will most likely be an open source project.

Link to github: https://github.com/baibhavx/TerminalLite

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