Real Linux. In a browser tab. No install. No server. No Docker

https://linuxontab.com/

by kilian-ai • 17 days ago

11 14 17 days ago

linuxontab.com

smalltorch2• 17 days ago

You've been posting this for awhile can you tell me more about how this works?

m1keil2• 17 days ago

Probably a slop of https://bellard.org/jslinux/

bjconlan• 17 days ago

This is a pretty harsh critique, while I see the agent related markdown the application seems measured and well applied. Hardly seems like slop; it's might be a one man show+ai agent but the direction and project composition feel like it's something that's logical and manageable.

I personally like the idea even as a p.o.c (inline with bellards work). I'd like to see how nostr & cloudflare workers providing out of band ops on what is effectively a container per tab.

calmingsolitude• 17 days ago

Have to agree. Unsure why the page is comparing with docker/cloud shell instead of jslinux/webvm.

kilian-ai6• 15 days ago

thanks for your question. so, i was trying to build a posix scriptable operating system in a browser tab to be sandboxed but still capable of communicating within nodes. i build the posix-based agent claw that is integrated to allow agentic development on this edge and share the result over the nostr protocol with other users that have the system open in a tab. the tab is used as modern platform-agnostic abstraction because it even works on a mobile phone. the emulation allows to use the complete alpine linux repository for all the tools that one want to use in the system with or without agent. i experimented with tunnels and bridges that allow to open ports on the tab system and expose them to fixed ips and ports through my relays workers. i successfully connected ssh, sftp and https from internet to my browser tab, i experimented with syncthing with the idea of being able to automatically sync files between the browser tabs essentially a sandboxed file network between tabs on any platform.

rvz• 17 days ago

The entire project is complete low-effort slop. Even the user name of the person is AI and the title says it all.

This account has been posting the same site repeatedly and it makes me think that this is 100% a bot account or AI agent.

I think we need a higher quality bar for posts on HN given that the flood of low quality projects such as this just add additional noise.

The comment that you cannot see at the bottom violates the HN guide-lines of AI-generated text from: [0]

"Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kilian-ai6• 15 days ago

high-effort slop... ;) no, it is a serious attempt to sandbox a network capable linux system on a browser tab with built-in anonymous file-sharing and an integrated agent that can control the command-line.

apignotti• 17 days ago

As another commenter pointed out this is similar to our WebVM (https://webvm.io) , although this one is based on v86 so it will be less performant.

Although the x86 virtualization angle is powerful we think that native WebAssembly executables on top of a Linux-compatible kernel are more viable for the execution of full workloads in the browser.

BrowserPod is a newer project of ours that brings to vision to life, we have recently published a deep dive that might be interesting: https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/browserpod-deep-dive

kilian-ai6• 15 days ago

i like your work. i am also experimenting with a native webassembly linux core and the performance is incredible. i just had enormous trouble and work compiling packages for the wasm32-linux target. it would be a nice community effort to compile the open source world to this architecture. the browser tab as clean, secure, multi-platform and polyglot abstraction layer.

Real Linux. In a browser tab. No install. No server. No Docker

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