Linux In JavaScript, With Persistent Storage 171
An anonymous reader writes "Remember Fabrice bellard's [Linux-booting PC emulator in JavaScript] ? This modified version [Note: click on "emulator.html" in that directory to see it in action] allows the same emulator to boot the most recent linux kernel, 3.0.4, as well as providing the user with persistent storage. It is achieved by building a virtual block device, which stores data in HTML5 local storage. The block device can be partitioned and formatted as ext2, so it can be easily used."
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can? Because nobody else has done it? Because it's cool? Because it's a challenge?
It depresses me that everyone always responds to these articles with "Why?" and "What's the point?" and "What a waste of time". The whole of human achievement is pretty much the story of people doing things just to see if they can, or because it's interesting to them, or because it's never been done before.
Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Because you can,
2) Because no-one else ever has,
3) Because there are useful lessons that can be learned by performing an exercise like this.
and I'll go ahead and speculate on the fourth and possibly best reason:
4) Because the developer enjoyed solving the problems involved in doing it
The time he spent doing this is probably equivalent to the time you spent watching all 5 seasons of the Battlestar Galactica. I'll leave it to you to decide which was the more monumental waste of time.
Re:I hope this JavaScript fad blows over soon. (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you want us to use Flash instead? O! Enlighten us, wise one, about the numerous other languages that are available for web browsers!
Re:I hope this JavaScript fad blows over soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, it's basically a mistake of history and circumstance that it's so widely available.
Herein lies the reason why javascript is not 'just a fad'. No matter your opinion of the DOM and javascript syntax, it is *capable* of being used to get the job done and it is everywhere. Other than making tasks absolutely impossible, it's hard to offset in difficulty the benefit of being everywhere. No other language will be everywhere so long as javascript is 'good enough'. Any browser attempting to bring their own favored child in will not meet with adoption because Javascript will work too and on other browsers. Short of getting Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Firefox to adopt the language with *zero* footprint to start with, nothing will change.
Re:uhhh (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, this should make you chuckle and smile and say "Wow!"
"Why" might be in there somewhere but if it's your first port of call, you're a lost cause - hand in your geek card.
This Is Not Linux in Javascript (Score:5, Insightful)
This cool Web app is not "Linux in Javascript". It is in fact a "Javascript PC Emulator", just as the app says in the app's page title. It's a bootloader and a virtual PC implemented in Javascript running in the browser JS engine. Which loads a stripped-down Linux binary into itself and runs it, as if it were running on the PC. The Linux was written in C, compiled into PC (x86) machine instructions like any PC Linux, and then runs on the Javascript PC emulator.
I suppose it might be possible to run a Windows binary on it, if that bloatware would fit in the browser. Maybe DOS, or even Novell Netware (though this Linux demo has its networking stripped, and in any case the browser enforces the originating-server-only network access).
Very admirable project. Truly journalistic bad headline and summary.