WebVM is a server-less virtual Linux environment running client-side

by sebg • 2 years ago

632 122 2 years ago

fragmede4• 2 years ago

Networking provided by Tailscale. Clever! Works around some potential issues.

apignotti10• 2 years ago

Using Tailscale is the most effective solution for in-browser networking, we wrote at length about the topic some time ago: https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/webvm-virtual-machine-with...

saurik• 2 years ago

I am really confused by one part of your blog post: it says that you had to embed Lwip as applications don't send/receive IP packets... but you also describe this as x86 virtualization running specifically-Linux, and Linux absolutely has its own TCP stack, so I don't understand what Lwip is actually accomplishing here... I would have thought you'd essentially be implemented as a paravirtualized network adapter, but then the article mentions system calls? I guess I just fundamentally don't understand at what level of the stack you have this implemented... did you replace the Linux kernel and reimplement its entire system call layer?

cchance• 2 years ago

Can we use custom derp/headscale setups? Would be interesting even for use internally then, hell rolling custom versions with preloaded software could also be pretty cool all connected to a corporate headscale/derp.

tech234a• 2 years ago

Could be cool to see an implementation using Chrome's experimental Direct Sockets API [0]. The API requires using a form of new web packaging known as Isolated Web Apps which have a strict CSP [1] though, so it might not be possible to use it for this since I'd assume it's dynamically executing a lot of code.

[0] https://github.com/WICG/direct-sockets/blob/main/docs/explai...

[1] https://github.com/WICG/isolated-web-apps/blob/main/README.m...

matt3210• 2 years ago

root password?

fragmede4• 2 years ago

"password", per https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm/blob/main/dockerfiles/d...

alex14fr2• 2 years ago

This feels way slower than https://bellard.org/jslinux/

jedisct1• 2 years ago

Hard to compete with Bellard :)

nullifidian• 2 years ago

I tried compiling mandelbrot.c (single threaded one) from the benchmarks game and execution on jslinux took 12 seconds, while webvm completed it in 1.2 sec. The host takes 0.03 sec with the same gcc flags.

alex14fr2• 2 years ago

It may be faster for this particular benchmark, yet it feels slow and sluggish for interactive use.

apignotti10• 2 years ago

Hi, Lead Dev of WebVM and CTO of Leaning Technologies here. Happy to answer any questions you might have... potentially in a few hours, it's quite late here :-)

Even better, consider joining our Discord: https://discord.gg/yTNZgySKGa

debarshri• 2 years ago

Hello there, I havent tried webvm yet but looks similar to v86. There were lot of network related challenges working with v86, for eg. You cant do curl, DNS resolution does not work out of the box. How did you address these challenges in webvm. I think it is very interesting and exciting what you guys are building.

apignotti10• 2 years ago

We support networking via Tailscale, we wrote a detailed blog post some time ago: https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/webvm-virtual-machine-with...

theanonymousone• 2 years ago

Hi and thanks for the effort. Is there a roadmap for supporting GUI applications?

apignotti10• 2 years ago

Yes, we are working on it right now. The immediate priority is booting a complete desktop environment. Next steps will include 3D graphics.

bilekas3• 2 years ago

Hi thanks for taking part! I have probably very silly questions but why?

What are the use cases you Invision?

Last but not least, an IRC server/channel in lieu of discord? I'm stuck in my ways!

Nice work too, I hope this doesn't come across as flippant.

EDIT: Side note, I opened vi and escape is.. well maybe a browser issue but 'cant exit vi' .. Never thought id say that again

jgraham20• 2 years ago

May it is a browser issue. I was able to exit with ':q<Enter>'

zja• 2 years ago

Answer to the second question is that no one uses IRC.

The trend of using discord over forums does suck though, it’s really hard to search old discussions.

_xivi• 2 years ago

What are the use cases you Invision?

Not OP, but they said the following in an answer to similar question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40940707

"The technology is extremely flexibile, off the top of my head:

* Education (Linux, Programming, Security, ...)

* Live docs for arbitrary languages and binary libraries

* Preservation of historical software and games

* Virtualization of legacy Windows enterprise apps.

* Dev environment for Web IDEs

Just a few examples, the list could go on for long"

gwd3• 2 years ago

Last but not least, an IRC server/channel in lieu of discord? I'm stuck in my ways!

IRC is nice for people who use it, but it has a huuuuge barrier to entry for new users. The very first thing you have to do is choose a client out of a list of 100 clients, half of which haven't been maintained since 2003. Then you need to set up a bouncer somewhere so that you can see messages that were posted when you were away. Those two things will filter out 99.99% of new people.

Or, you could use Discord (or Matrix); people sign up for an account and that's it.

Our open-source project switched from IRC to Matrix (after having been on IRC for over a decade before that), and got a noticeable uptick in engagement.

Unfortunately, Matrix still has some long-standing UI quirks, which would make me reluctant to use it in a context where I want people to pay me money; particularly if some of those are non-technical users.

d_philla• 2 years ago

Hey Alessandro - I'm a huge fan of WebVM + y'all's other work at Leaning Tech.

Curious - is your implementation of how you wrangled lwIP for the networking piece open source? I had previously read the article you linked elsewhere, re: networking, but would love to see the specifics of your approach there.

apignotti10• 2 years ago

All the components of the network stack are open source: namely the Tailscale go client and the lwip networking stack. Some (not fully trivial) glue code is also required, which is not currently published. We do plan to cleanup the stack and release it as one of our upcoming internship projects.

koolala3• 2 years ago

Are you associated with Tail Scale? Is Tail Scale like a proxy? Are other options available - is Tail Scale open source too?

edit: Saw your other reply!

https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/webvm-virtual-machine-with...

pmontra3• 2 years ago

I tested in Firefox on Linux. It works well except:

1. Copy and paste does not work and this could be bad for basically every editing task (programming etc).

2. The screen freezes sometimes and keypresses don't appear. Usually pressing backspace unfreezes the screen. Firefox about:performance doesn't show any CPU usage in the tab. Linux's htop (on my machine) doesn't show anything strange with Firefox.

And a question: I saw that new files persist after closing the tab and opening it again. I didn't investigate my localstorage etc with Developer Tools. Did you use that or some other browser feature? How truly persistent are those files?

apignotti10• 2 years ago

1. Support for traditional copy/paste shortcuts is problematic, since Ctrl-C is interpreted as the SIGINT signal. Copying via the mouse menu should work. Pasting is supported via Ctrl+Shift+V.

2. We had these reported from several users and we will investigate as soon as we can: https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm/issues/102

To answer you question: filesystem chunks are cached/persisted using a local IndexedDB. It provides a fairly strong level of persistence, although the user can wipe it out of course.

osrec• 2 years ago

Could it be possible to run containers within this environment?

I ask because I personally think we are headed towards a future where web browsers are just sandboxed container environments where we download and run containers for each app...

Eventually, even calling them "web" browsers might feel a little odd, almost the way in which we "dial" a phone number today, even though we now mostly key it in on a touch screen.

apignotti10• 2 years ago

Well, the environment itself is a container. Supporting Linux "namespaces" used to implement containers is also a possibility.

As described in the project README we provide a GitHub Action workflow to convert Dockerfiles into bootable images for WebVM: https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm

smusamashah• 2 years ago

There are a few others

VMs

https://copy.sh/v86/

https://bellard.org/jslinux/

https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/ (https://github.com/jsdf/pce)

https://www.pcjs.org/ (lots of hardware and OSes) (https://github.com/jeffpar/pcjs)

Mac OS

https://infinitemac.org/ (https://blog.persistent.info/2023/03/infinitemac-dot-org.htm...)

https://jamesfriend.com.au/projects/basiliskii/BasiliskII-wo...

https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

baudaux• 2 years ago

https://exaequos.com

zamadatix• 2 years ago

These are full system emulators, this is more a compatibility layer ("Linux syscall emulator") for emulated userland binaries. I.e. a bit higher level and a bit more usable/flexible as a result.

Recursing3• 2 years ago

I think it's also much faster in practice

terr-dav• 2 years ago

Where do the most advanced minecraft computers[1] land on the scale of sophistication compared to all these + WebVM?

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=comptuers+built+in+minecraft

tamimio2• 2 years ago

What a practical use case of such thing?

apignotti10• 2 years ago

(Same answer as a more deeply nested comment below)

The technology is extremely flexibile, off the top of my head:

* Education (Linux, Programming, Security, ...)

* Live docs for arbitrary languages and binary libraries

* Preservation of historical software and games

* Virtualization of legacy Windows enterprise apps.

* Dev environment for Web IDEs

Just a few examples, the list could go on for long

tamimio2• 2 years ago

Very interesting, thanks! and good luck on the project.

getpokedagain• 2 years ago

installing emacs in my web browser?

old_hat• 2 years ago

This isn't WebVM specifically, but one example using WebContainers we've built is https://demo.graphweaver.com/

This runs a NodeJS server and frontend in your browser so you can see what Graphweaver can do without having to install or run anything more than a browser on your computer. The example has an SQLite database joined to a REST API. Graphweaver serves a GraphQL API with the result.

_moof• 2 years ago

Making your senior engineers take off their glasses, sigh, and pinch the bridge of their nose.

revskill2• 2 years ago

I don't get you, how about the juniors ?

hexo2• 2 years ago

Just a curiosity to play a bit

ptspts• 2 years ago

It doesn't work in my Chrome on Android. The cursor is blinking, nothing happens.

If a browser is not supported, the site should display a specific error message.

cebert• 2 years ago

Works fine for me on Android

danans• 2 years ago

Can it be made to work offline and keep state locally between reloads?

apignotti10• 2 years ago

Working offline is not truly possible since that would require downloading the full 2GB disk image, which is something that is deliberately avoided by the system architecture.

State is already locally maintained via IndexedDB, no data is ever sent back or saved on our servers.

theragra• 2 years ago

For many people that's not an issues, so maybe you need to add it someday.

xyst• 2 years ago

Looks like it’s broken on mobile

Zambyte• 2 years ago

Works for me in Firefox Focus on Android

nasretdinov• 2 years ago

Worked on stock iOS in Safari! Must've taken them ages to debug...

localfirst• 2 years ago

can i run a webserver that can talk with the internet and others can call

liamYC• 2 years ago

I suspect you’d have trouble opening ports on the client’s machine. Maybe you could use a dedicated http proxy the client talks to

koolala3• 2 years ago

A custom service worker might be able to proxy for you without needing Tail Scale.

fragmede4• 2 years ago

Tailscale funnel should work. I'll double-check when I'm back home if someone else hasn't.

sitkack• 2 years ago

It even emulates fork!

supportengineer• 2 years ago

$ uptime

Error: /proc must be mounted

dangoodmanUT• 2 years ago

ungodly slow on apple silicon

doctor_eval• 2 years ago

I first used Slackware Linux off floppies in the mid 90s, yet every time I see linux in the browser I am gobsmacked.

I’ve said for a while that a browser is basically its own operating system. Now it can host operating systems!

ladysera• 2 years ago

Hi, this looks really amazing, will give it a try later thanks

remram• 2 years ago

Totally unusable on mobile unfortunately (at least Firefox and Chrome on Android). Might be a limitation of how the keyboard works, but every command gets duplicated (at least) when I enter it.

zoom6628• 2 years ago

Using Brave browser on iPhoneXR works nicely.

nyanpasu64• 2 years ago

Can we port Adobe Flash to WebVM to avoid having to pay for "CheerpX for Flash"?

unsolvedcypher• 2 years ago

Have you tried Ruffle? It's also capable of running Flash in the browser.

fragmede4• 2 years ago

Why do you want to scam them out of their hard work?

spankalee• 2 years ago

Cool, but very often my keystrokes aren't showing up, making this pretty unusable.

Also, for the use case of local dev environment for Web IDEs, this doesn't look fast enough.

    node --version

runs fast after the first time, but executing any JavaScript is very, very slow:

    user@:~$ time node -e "console.log('Hello')"
    Hello
    
    real    0m7.693s
    user    0m0.012s
    sys     0m0.000s

jkhanlar2• 2 years ago

bash: man: command not found

jfmc• 2 years ago

Note that "CheerpX enables you to run existing 32-bit x86 native binaries". For some reason support for wasm64 (in browsers) has been stagnated for years, which is a pity.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

Most WASM, WebGL and WebGPU features take ages in browsers, measured in decades.

saagarjha3• 2 years ago

You do understand that most of these features were conceived of maybe a decade ago, if at all?

bfung• 2 years ago

server-less - like the server that runs the browser that the VM runs inside.

/sarcasm

jbritton• 2 years ago

Where are files located, server, client, browser local storage?

How do you import a .exe compiled elsewhere, curl, scp?

This is a Linux environment, but it can run Windows apps? How does that work?

Uptrenda• 2 years ago

Now just needs some kind of hack for networking through a browser extension and this would be so awesome.

Tajnymag• 2 years ago

Networking is already supported through the Tailscale network. Once you login, the vm should be able to connect to the internet through your exit node.

me551ah• 2 years ago

Now if only I could install chrome via apt and run it inside of this linux machine.

Animats• 2 years ago

Love the buzzwords.

It's a Linux command line environment running in a browser. Slowly.

parasti• 2 years ago

Have to agree, that description is more confusing than anything. I guess JS code that a web browser executes is considered "serverless" now.

koreankid227• 2 years ago

Lol I was so confused

revskill2• 2 years ago

Sweet, could i run a nodejs http api directly from browser ?

hexo2• 2 years ago

Let me fix the title: "WebVM is a wasm VM running in browser"

dchest• 2 years ago

Looks like the underlying project is not open source:

"WebVM is based on a CheerpX build that we host. We encourage users to deploy their own versions of WebVM, but we don’t currently allow self-hosting of the CheerpX engine itself. This public build of CheerpX is provided as-is and is free to use for technological exploration, testing and non-commercial uses. If you want to build a product on top of CheerpX/WebVM, please get in touch:"

https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/mini-webvm-your-linux-box-...

jckahn• 2 years ago

That’s a shame. I was excited at first, but my interest in this project is now gone.

Zetaphor• 2 years ago

Agreed, even the ability to self host the closed source WASM binary would have been acceptable.

marmaduke• 2 years ago

Can this run NFS or other network filesystems?

languagehacker• 2 years ago

First thing I tried was `apt-get install emacs` and it hung on downloading. Editor preferences aside, I assume any nonstandard package will have the same problem. Interesting idea, but apart from trivial glue you may not need more than a container or unikernel for anyway, I'm struggling to understand a practical use case.

phibz• 2 years ago

Seems like having tailscale or at least wireguard would be really useful in this

WebVM is a server-less virtual Linux environment running client-side

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