Experimental VM
Experimental VM is a special version of CollabVM used for testing new features, which launched in 2015 when CollabVM 1.1 released, and has been a main feature of the site since. It has been used to test many historically significant versions of CollabVM, including:
Table of Versions
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 1.1 | The aforementioned C++ rewrite of the older socket.computer based "CollabVM 1.0", by Cosmic Sans, who was the then-lead developer of the site. |
| 1.2 | A ever so slight change in the core, which would spark the longest-running line of CollabVM versions in the site's history (1.2 - 1.2.11). |
| 2.0 | A complete rewrite of 1.x, made by the same person. It is evidently a subject of development hell. It was too unstable and was very buggy (audio support was even more so, PCM audio forwarded through Guacamole), so it was canned and reverted to 1.2.11. |
| 1.2-ts | A TypeScript rewrite of collab-vm-server 1.2, by Elijah, a new face at the time. It's basically meant to function identically to CollabVM 1.2 except the code is a lot more readable and it's not as complicated to setup anymore. It's just a lot more stable too. |
| 3.0 | There were several attempts at a "CollabVM 3.0", the first one being the one which was worked on from late 2021-late 2022, by modeco80 who replaced Cosmic Sans as the lead developer of the site. There were many allegations of "feature creeping" at this time. Development took a while. That was canned as well eventually due to the reasons stated before. However, in 2023, new development would start on a new codebase of the same name. Compared to its predecessors, development was very speedy and fast. New features were being implemented at a much greater rate, and successfully at that. Including a custom-written VNC client/protocol, a brand new webapp, and even audio! A much better implementation of it at that! That would make it the first time the site had working audio in nearly 4 years! |
Status
ExperimentalVM is currently being used to host the CollabVM 3.0 public testing, and can be used here. CollabVM 3.0 is almost finished, and it will release very soon, hopefully by the start of 2024.