Javascript based x86 emulator thats capable of running Linux

tiersten

Javascript PC Emulator

Yeah... Thats just... yeah...

I assume it is legitimate considering this guy wrote QEMU and a whole bunch of other fairly important stuff.

CodeBlox

Man, to me that's pretty cool. I'm not all that familiar with JS, but really, do you think the language was meant for things like this? I've seen a MOS-6502 done and working in JavaScript as well. I forget the authors name, though.

JDMurray

It's an emulation of several pieces of x86 hardware written entirely in JavaScript. It runs BusyBox with a 2.6.20 Linux kernel and uses a Web browser as a terminal. Here are the technical notes describing it. Very, very impressive.

The guy that did wrote it also wrote QEMU and has his own Wikipedia page too.

RobertKaucher

That goes beyond any awesomeness that can verbally be described....

ChooseLife

I love this part:

Anyway, this emulator was a way to learn how to write optimized code for recent Javascript engines

The world goes "awwwe!" and the guy goes "oh, I was just learning and playing around with JavaScript..."

JDMurray

He already knows a tremendous amount about writing virtualized hardware emulators. What better way for him to learn about new features of a language than to write yet another emulator. Maybe he'll want to learn Python next and port the whole thing over to it.

some guy

That's amazing, especially for the fact it's JavaScript-based!. It looks like a neat place to practice some Linux commands without even downloading anything. It's going in my favorites for sure.

JDMurray

Note that BusyBox uses ash (Almquist shell), which is a very minimal Linux shell. It doesn't have near the features or scripting capabilities as ksh or bash, and is about the most minimal usable shell implementation for Linux you can find.