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JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

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Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#81

Post by andai »

simonw wrote: post #19

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…

I run agents as a separate Linux user. So they can blow up their own home directory, but not mine. I think that's what most people are actually trying to solve with sandboxing.

(I assume this works on Macs too, both being Unixes, roughly speaking :)

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#83

Post by testifye »

I've been using the x86_64 Alpine jslinux browser image in Chrome for the last 4 hours - pulling code down via git, building several large packages from source, editing and altering code, and running their test suites. This VM may be 50 times slower than native, but it is rock solid - worked perfectly and is stable. It's simply remarkable.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#84

Post by kristianp »

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?

https://infinitemac.org/ is an example of a good use: users can try out old versions of Mac OS, to see what's changed and what software used to be available for old versions. It doesn't use JSLinux, but other emulators [1]

[1] https://blog.persistent.info/2025/03/infinite-mac-os-x.html

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#85

Post by brucehoult »

vexnull wrote: post #75
brucehoult wrote: post #69

Out of interest I tried running my Primes benchmark [1] on both the x86_64 and x86 Alpine and the riscv64 Buildroot, both in Chrome on M1 Mac Mini. Both are 2nd run so that all needed code is already cached locally. x86_64: localhost:~# time gcc -O primes.c -o primes real 0m 3.18s user 0m 1.30s sys 0m 1.47s localhost:~# time ./primes Starting run 3713160 primes found in 456995 ms 245 bytes of code in countPrimes() re…

Interesting to see the gcc version gap between the targets. The x86_64 image shipping gcc 15.2.0 vs 7.3.0 on riscv64 makes the performance comparison less apples-to-apples than it looks - newer gcc versions have significantly better optimization passes, especially for register allocation.

The RISC-V one has just never been touched since it was created in 2018.

> newer gcc versions have significantly better optimization passes

So what you're saying is that with a modern compiler RISC-V would win by even more?

TBH I doubt much has changed with register allocation on register-rich RISC ISAs since 2018. On i386, yeah, quite possible.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#86

Post by brumar »

jraph wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #19

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…

Simon, this HN post didn't need to be about Gen AI. This thing is really inescapable those days.

Why not leting upvotes do their thing? I enjoyed this comment.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#87

Post by simonw »

bakugo wrote: post #73
yokoprime wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not reading his material i suppose? It’s really one of the better sources for informed takes on llms

I just went and read one of his recent posts at: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/5/chardet/ The entire thing is just quotes and a retelling of events. The closest thing to a "take" I could find is this: > I have no idea how this one is going to play out. I’m personally leaning towards the idea that the rewrite is legitimate, but the arguments on both sides of this are entirely credible. Which effectively says noth…

I think my coverage of the Mark Pilgrim situation added value in that most people probably aren't aware that Mark Pilgrim removed himself from internet life in 2011, which is relevant to the chardet story.

That second Karpathy example is from my link blog. Here's my post describing how I try to add something new when I write about things on my link blog: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/22/link-blog/

In the case of that Karpathy post I was amplifying the idea that "Claw" is now the generic name for that class of software, which is notable.

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#88

Post by hrmtst93837 »

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.

[flagged]

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#89

Post by girvo »

stavros wrote: post #67
yokoprime wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chuckled. Everything on earth is recent if you look at it from a cosmic timeframe I guess

To be fair, it really was annoying when everything was blockchain.

On the other hand man was it easy to make money at the time. I guess that’s probably true now for those in the AI space too

Re: JSLinux Now Supports x86_64

#90

Post by unit149 »

brucehoult wrote: post #69

Out of interest I tried running my Primes benchmark [1] on both the x86_64 and x86 Alpine and the riscv64 Buildroot, both in Chrome on M1 Mac Mini. Both are 2nd run so that all needed code is already cached locally. x86_64: localhost:~# time gcc -O primes.c -o primes real 0m 3.18s user 0m 1.30s sys 0m 1.47s localhost:~# time ./primes Starting run 3713160 primes found in 456995 ms 245 bytes of code in countPrimes() re…

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