Terminal – New Online Computing Environment

1 minute read

While CodeBunk and Neutron Drive have free and accessible online developing environments, they lack a certain robustness characteristic of offline computing. Terminal is a new online computing environment that seeks to provide fast and powerful tools for deploying applications, testing software, and executing computations via external servers. Developers face the hassle of setting up environments on their desktop that hinder the computer from being used in other contexts (without stripping the environment). In many cases, multiple servers, IDEs, and chats may be open as coworkers collaborate and rush to finish projects. This can be a quite cluttered desktop environment. Terminal seeks to provide a powerful online environment to allow users to run their environments off of external machines.

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Terminal’s home page. Looks like Bootstrap.

Here are a few unique features that Terminal offers:

1. Servers

Users are given the opportunity to use environments known as Terminal instances. These are essentially virtual machines that allow users to run applications on a remote server.

2. Environments

Terminal functions like any other desktop. It’s an all-inclusive environment that boasts support for a wide-variety of languages. Computing power can be resized without a need to restart the server.

3. Snapshots

Snapshots are exactly as they sound: pictures. They are pictures of the running state of virtual machines. They let you compare various environments and reload past set-ups.

4. Fast, Easy, and Efficient

Terminal boasts a 5 second start-up time, wide scalability (you can choose how much RAM and CPU power you use for your given project and you’re charged accordingly), and ease of application deployment. Terminal can be used as a powerful collaborative tool as well.

Altogether, Terminal is worth checking out if you’re a developer getting frustrated with the accumulating clutter on your desktop.

If you’re interested in checking out this new type of environment, you can find it here.

 

 

 

 

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