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JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

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Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#141

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

repstosb wrote: post #138
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll bet you can't name a single advantage such a system would have over cloud hosting or a local Docker instance. Cheaper than renting a server, more isolated than a container.

But Docker is free (unless you're a fairly large business, in which case containerd is still free, and you can either pay for the front-end license or figure out how to set up one of the free alternatives), and from what perspective are the isolations available for the containerd process inferior to those available for your browser process? The former was at least designed from the ground up with security, auditing,…

I would argue the exact opposite: Linux is great, but it wasn't really designed with a focus on containing hostile software, and while containers have come to be a decent security barrier, they're still one kernel bug away from compromise. On the other hand, the browser is very accustomed to being the most exposed security-sensitive software on a machine, and modern browsers and wasm in particular are designed against that threat. Heck, wasm is so good for security that Mozilla started compiling components to wasm and then back into native code to get memory safety ( https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-weba... ).

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#142

Post by dmitrygr »

thesz wrote: post #117
brucehoult wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very small effect in the overall decoding of an instruction even in a pure interpretive emulator, and undetectable in a JIT. Also MIPS code is much larger.

MIPS code is not much larger. There are two interesting differences of ISA between MIPS and RISC-V: that MIPS does not have branch on condition, only on zero/non-zero and that MIPS has 16 bit immediates with appropriate sign extension (all zeroes for ORI, all ones for ANDI). The first difference makes MIPS programs about 10% larger and second difference makes MIPS programs smaller (RISC-V immediates are 11.5 bits due…

ANDI is not 1-extended (though that would be nice) it is 0-extended. MIPS only has 2 extension modes for immediates - sign extended and zero-extended. all logical ops are 0-extended, all arith ops are sign extended.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#143

Post by saagarjha »

lxgr wrote: post #116
saagarjha wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're building code specifically to run in emulation, use RISC-V: builds faster, smaller code, runs faster. I don't really think this bears out in practice. RISC-V is easy to emulate but this does not make it fast to emulate. Emulation performance is largely dominated by other factors where RISC-V does not uniquely dominate.

Do you have an explanation for GP's benchmark results then?

If they had a working link I might

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#144

Post by brucehoult »

saagarjha wrote: post #143
lxgr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an explanation for GP's benchmark results then?

If they had a working link I might

Oh darn, I mistyped that, though it's not that hard to guess how to fix the typo (or Google):

http://hoult.org/primes.txt

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#145

Post by thesz »

dmitrygr wrote: post #142
thesz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIPS code is not much larger. There are two interesting differences of ISA between MIPS and RISC-V: that MIPS does not have branch on condition, only on zero/non-zero and that MIPS has 16 bit immediates with appropriate sign extension (all zeroes for ORI, all ones for ANDI). The first difference makes MIPS programs about 10% larger and second difference makes MIPS programs smaller (RISC-V immediates are 11.5 bits due…

ANDI is not 1-extended (though that would be nice) it is 0-extended. MIPS only has 2 extension modes for immediates - sign extended and zero-extended. all logical ops are 0-extended, all arith ops are sign extended.

Thanks. My memory failed me, I've implemented MIPS 18 years ago.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#146

Post by repstosb »

simonw wrote: post #140
repstosb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, bash, sed, etc. are great, but a VM running inside a browser seems like the least efficient way to access them. Even if you're stuck on Windows, Cygwin has been a thing for 30 years now, and WSL for ten or so? There should be plenty of ways to set up a sandbox without having the simulate an entire machine. It sounds like what you're really trying to recreate is the Software Tools movement from 50 years ago,…

This isn't meant to be a daily driver. I'd like the option to build systems that occasionally run filesystem agent loops on an ad-hoc basis, for any user. A browser is a really good platform for that.

So are Cygwin and WSL, though, for those who don't already have the luxury of being on Linux or UNIX (incl. MacOS). I'm sure there are uses for running full-system emulators inside a browser, but access to bash and sed and gawk doesn't seem like one of them. Seriously, if that's the best way to get access to good text manipulation tools, why aren't you ditching your entire OS?

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#147

Post by repstosb »

thepasch wrote: post #121
repstosb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well, there it is, the dumbest thing I'll read on the internet all week. Most of the engineering in Linux revolves around efficiently managing hardware interfaces to build up higher-level primitives, upon which your browser builds even higher-level primitives,…

> while taking the joyful bits of software development away from you Quick question: by "joyful bits of software development," do you mean the bit where you design robust architectures, services, and their communication/data concepts to solve specific problems, or the part where you have to assault a keyboard for extended periods of time _after_ all that interesting work so that it all actually does anything? Because…

I guess I enjoy solving problems, and recognize that the devil is always in the details, so I don't get much satisfaction until I see the whole stack working in concert. I never had much esteem for "architects" who sketch some blobs on the whiteboard and then disappear. I certainly wouldn't want to be "that guy" for anyone else, and I'm not even sure I could do it to an LLM.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#148

Post by simonw »

repstosb wrote: post #146
simonw wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be a daily driver. I'd like the option to build systems that occasionally run filesystem agent loops on an ad-hoc basis, for any user. A browser is a really good platform for that.

So are Cygwin and WSL, though, for those who don't already have the luxury of being on Linux or UNIX (incl. MacOS). I'm sure there are uses for running full-system emulators inside a browser, but access to bash and sed and gawk doesn't seem like one of them. Seriously, if that's the best way to get access to good text manipulation tools, why aren't you ditching your entire OS?

Because bash and sed and suchlike turn out to be the most useful tools for unlocking the abilities of AI agents to do interesting things - more so than previous attempts like MCP.
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