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JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

bellard.org

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Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#11

Post by toast0 »

petcat wrote: post #2

I've always been fascinated by this, but I have never known what it would be useful for. Does anyone know of any practical use cases?

I use a similar emulator (v86) as a way to share my hobby OS. Approximately zero people, even my friends, are going to boot my hobby OS on real hardware; I did manage to convince some of them to run it in qemu, but it's difficult. A browser environment shows the thing quite well; and easy networking is cool too.

My hobby OS itself is not very useful, but it's fun if you're in the right mood.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#14

Post by maxloh »

wolttam wrote: post #10

I can launch this thing and start making arbitrary connections out to port 25 on the internet from some random IP? Hmm.

From the "Technical notes" page:

> Access to Internet is possible inside the emulator. It uses the websocket VPN offered by Benjamin Burns (see his blog). The bandwidth is capped to 40 kB/s and at most two connections are allowed per public IP address. Please don't abuse the service.

https://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#15

Post by westurner »

How do TinyEmu and JSLinux compare to linux-wasm?

From "Show HN: Amla Sandbox – WASM bash shell sandbox for AI agents" (2026) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46825119 :

>>> How to run vscode-container-wasm-gcc-example with c2w, with joelseverin/linux-wasm?

>> linux-wasm is apparently faster than c2w

From "Ghostty compiled to WASM with xterm.js API compatibility" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46118267 :

> From joelseverin/linux-wasm: https://github.com/joelseverin/linux-wasm :

>> Hint: Wasm lacks an MMU, meaning that Linux needs to be built in a NOMMU configuration

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229385 :

>> There's a pypi:SystemdUnitParser.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#17

Post by redleader55 »

petcat wrote: post #2

I've always been fascinated by this, but I have never known what it would be useful for. Does anyone know of any practical use cases?

Agentic workloads create and then run code. You don't want to just run that code in a "normal" environment like a container, or even a very well protected VM. There are other options, ofc - eg. gvisor, crossvm, firecracker, etc, but this one is uncommon enough to have a small number of attackers trying to hack it.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#19

Post by simonw »

The thing I most want to use this (or some other WASM Linux engine) for is running a coding agent against a virtual operating system directly in my browser.

Claude Code / Codex CLI / etc are all great because they know how to drive Bash and other Linux tools.

The browser is probably the best sandbox we have. Being able to run an agent loop against a WebAssembly Linux would be a very cool trick.

I had a play with v86 a few months ago but didn't quite get to the point where I hooked up the agent to it - here's my WIP: https://tools.simonwillison.net/v86 - it has a text input you can use to send commands to the Linux machine, which is pretty much what you'd need to wire in an agent too.

In that demo try running "cat test.lua" and then "lua test.lua".

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#20

Post by srdjanr »

redleader55 wrote: post #17
petcat wrote: post #2

I've always been fascinated by this, but I have never known what it would be useful for. Does anyone know of any practical use cases?

Agentic workloads create and then run code. You don't want to just run that code in a "normal" environment like a container, or even a very well protected VM. There are other options, ofc - eg. gvisor, crossvm, firecracker, etc, but this one is uncommon enough to have a small number of attackers trying to hack it.

What's wrong with a well protected VM? Especially compared to something where the security selling point is "no one uses it" (according to your argument; I don't know how secure this actually is)
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