Is there anything like a cloud based linux where you can access desktop GUI just through a web browser?

Question

My laptop broke a few weeks ago and I need to get out of the house sometimes when I work just for a change of pace but right now I'm stuck just working on my desktop.. I'd like to go work on a public computer (like at a library or something) but I need to have full access to a development environment, so I could use linux (ideally Ubuntu) for this, I have set up remote cloud servers before and accessed the GUI desktop through the FreeNX client, but on a public computer I don't think I could even install this so I'm wondering if anyone knows of anything that has come along recently that provides a full linux desktop access through a web browser (I would imagine it would be done with AJAX)... probably just wishful thinking but am interested to hear any input.. thanks

Answer 1

VNC, for quite some time, has had a built-in viewer accessible via java from a browser. This isn't quite the same as a cloud hosted desktop, but you can do that with Amazon EC2 + VNC at a price.