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JavaScript-Based OpenRISC Emulator Can Run Linux, GCC, Wayland
An anonymous reader writes "The jor1k is an interesting open-source toy emulator project to emulate a 32-bit OpenRISC OR1000 processor, 63MB of RAM, ocfb frame-buffer, and ATA-hard drive ... all in JavaScript. Though JavaScript based, there are asm.js optimizations and the performance seems to be quite decent in modern web browsers. The jor1k OpenRISC emulator can do a lot, even handle running the Linux kernel, GCC compiler, ScummVM Monkey Island, and the Wayland/Weston compositor, all from within the web browser."
Students still have too much time on their hands.
If they're doing all this emulation in JavaScript - they're going to need all that time...
#DeleteChrome
So it's a virtual machine running on a virtual machine running on a virtual machine. Nice.
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Well, I guess everyone has read about the Javascript PC emulator :
http://bellard.org/jslinux/index.html
I wonder if this fad of porting everything to JavaScript has something to do with preparing for an imagined day when popular home computing platforms will become as locked down as iOS and the game consoles are today. Web applications run fine, but anything else requires the platform owner's digital signature. And for a long time, getting such a signature from console makers has required establishment of a corporation or LLC, the payment of a substantial entry fee, an additional computer for running the development environment, and a team of developers who have had to move hundreds of miles just to get the required "relevant industry experience" working for a well-known software company.
Remaking EVERYTHING in JS is a total, complete waste of time. There's a saying that everything that can be written in C will eventually be written in C. This makes sense because once it's in C, it's going to run really quickly. That little whatever that was re-written in C, even partially, is just about as good as it gets when it comes to responsive, low-overhead, user-space tools. JS will never get appreciably better than it is now without those improvements affecting all other dynamic languages in turn, and JS is not regarded as a mogul of excellent syntax, language features, or any of the other notable strengths of other languages. Anything written in JS will eventually need a re-write. Using Node for little async, concurrent server communication relatively a niche. Just stop. This JS nonsense is way out of hand.
Obviously they need to write JavaScript in JavaScript.
So I can wait for code to run while I wait for code to run?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I tried the demo on my Nexus 7 using Chrome. The OS boots up, but there doesn't seem to be any way to activate the on-screen keyboard, so no way to send input to the window. Still, very impressive that it (mostly) works on Windows AND Android!