Want to play with Linux?

Started by Vekseid, May 18, 2011, 11:26:25 AM

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Vekseid

Someone wrote a javascript x86 emulator that is able to boot a Linux kernel.

http://bellard.org/jslinux/
http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html

Currently only works in Chrome 11 and Firefox 4 (I tried Opera, Safari, and IE - they don't work). It's not particularly functional, but it has vi, at least.

Alice Wonder

The halt command does not properly work ;)

I actually had not seen that, and it is at least 3 months old. Gah, I'm slipping.
I enjoy criticism on my stories - either way: The Student (explicit Femdom)

DarklingAlice

Cute. And cool. Thanks for pointing this out.
For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.


Alice Wonder

I wonder if one could could get enough of a network stack going in that emulator to use it for NAT.

Probably would not work from a browser due to security limitations of js, and even if working in a js environment external to a browser performance would be crap, but it still would be interesting to try, just to see if it could be done.
I enjoy criticism on my stories - either way: The Student (explicit Femdom)

Aludiana of the Dusk

Very cool, Vex. I found this very useful, as I'm learning Linux for work. We're trying to get Linux installed on the computers so we can run Evergreen, the free open source library system software.
~On Hiatus Indefinitely~

tsc

If anyone who's trying out Linux has questions, feel free to post them on this thread, or PM me.  My day job is Unix/Linux sysadmin, so I'm willing to help out a bit.  I can't be an expert in everything, of course, but at worst, I can help you come up with Google search terms to use!

Avis habilis

Hey, tsc - now that you mention it, what do you think of Knoppix? I took some Linux courses a while back & have wanted to mess around a little at home, but don't have a sacrificial machine or the nerve to try a dual boot.

(As an aside - unapproved members can't receive or send PMs, so you'll have to converse in threads for now.)

tsc

Quote from: Avis habilis on September 14, 2011, 01:48:06 PM
Hey, tsc - now that you mention it, what do you think of Knoppix? I took some Linux courses a while back & have wanted to mess around a little at home, but don't have a sacrificial machine or the nerve to try a dual boot.

(As an aside - unapproved members can't receive or send PMs, so you'll have to converse in threads for now.)

Ah -- I saw that this morning about PMs, but forgot it.

I like Knoppix.  It's a derivative of Debian, which is my favorite distribution to run on servers, but has a lot of additional hardware auto-detection stuff built in, since it's meant to run on just about any box you put it in.  I've used it several times in the past when I've had a server that wouldn't boot from its own hard drive, or when I wanted to do a quick disk-to-disk copy as part of upgrading the hard drive in a system.  A couple of times, I've booted it on a system, then copied the X Windows configuration file it autogenerated in order to get X working on a tricky system.

I haven't used it too much as a desktop OS, but it seems to include a good mix of tools for that.  The last time I played with it, Knoppix was still using KDE as the default desktop environment, which is a plus for me, since I prefer that over Gnome.  (There are versions that use Gnome, though, if you prefer that or want to try it -- search for "Gnoppix.")

Avis habilis

Dang, that's a clever stunt with X Windows. Thanks for the tip.

Aludiana of the Dusk

Quote from: tsc on September 14, 2011, 01:35:20 PM
If anyone who's trying out Linux has questions, feel free to post them on this thread, or PM me.  My day job is Unix/Linux sysadmin, so I'm willing to help out a bit.  I can't be an expert in everything, of course, but at worst, I can help you come up with Google search terms to use!

That's good to know. I can generally get in touch with someone who knows Linux when I need help, but expect questions when I can't get in touch with him.
~On Hiatus Indefinitely~

bluegill18

#10
It is quite neat, but it sucks that there isn't a lot you can do in it currently. I'm tempted to grab the source and build gcc into it (I dont like tcc), but I have a sneaky suspicion it wouldn't be ideal through a browser...

Also, Im roughly halfway on my linux from scratch build and taking on new fun projects would no doubt end in me not finish the LFS and setting it up how I want.

Also @Avis, you could always shrink your windows drive by a few gb and make it an ext4 partition, use a linux livecd to boot and just have a script that you run from your mounted hard drive space to use that as your home folder, and so on.