Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux In JavaScript, With Persistent Storage

Posted by timothy on from the and-all-I-want-is-a-working-wireless-card dept.

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."

3 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Educational sandbox? by Irick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This could be a great thing to embed into online how-tos and the like for teaching basic or even advanced linux. ... heh, embedded linux on the rise again :P

  2. Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! by somersault · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I think it's very cool. Technical, yes. Difficult? Probably not that difficult seeing as Linux is designed to be amazingly portable. It doesn't even need the C standard IO library to compile, so really you'd just need to emulate a few low level interfaces for things like memory access, keyboard input and a terminal display. There are a few different ways to implement it, but if he has it running quickly then that would be quite impressive :)

    --
    which is totally what she said
  3. New malware vector? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rather than using javascript to load infected files that use *.pdf and other infectible formats, they can now run a botnet just using an infected ad straight inside your web browser.