Linux in your browser

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I am sure you have heard of Linux. It is the operating system that powers the internet as well as a lot of devices we use every day from phones (Android is built on it) to smart TVs and even fridges. That is pretty amazing when it originated with a solo young Finnish programmer who gave it away. I have been using it on my home PC for years as it does all I need and I just prefer it to Windows.

If you want to try it out you can install it on a flash drive to boot on your PC, but here is an even simpler way. The jor1k project implements an emulated computer (with a RISC CPU) in Javascript and you can run it in any modern browser.

You can go straight to the demo.

Demo
Doom does actually work, but it barely playable.

On the left is a console where you can type commands. Initially your will see some messages as it boots up and then a prompt. Typing help will bring up a menu of things you can run. Otherwise you can run commands such as ls, cd, top. You can even open a second instance and telnet from one to the other. It seems you cannot connect from the host PC. I tried the text mode lynx browser for fun and could connect to Google.

It can do graphics, but even on a fast PC it may be a little slow. Still impressive when you appreciate what it is doing.

I have seen Spectrum and BBC Micro emulators in Javascript, but this is another level.

Have fun.

The geeky guitarist and facilitator of the 10K Minnows Project.



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These browser emulators are really great for getting people more involved with command line code, it's easy to forget with everything nowadays being GUI based that there is more to a computer (and that includes tablets and touch screen mobiles) then just icons you press on the screen. Code runs in the background on all of them and you can access a terminal session on most if you really want to.

With browser based emulators it's a good way to start off with coding without needing to multi boot a device or rent a vps. It would be super fun to see a series of coding projects where small apps could be developed in browser to do different things - I remember when I was a wee boy with my Acorn Electron 32k getting the hobby magazines that went with it - giving a page of code you could type in to make a dancing skeleton! It seems so rudimentary nowadays but that's how you learn start putting code in and see it make stuff happen.

For anyone wanting to get deeper into coding, if you have old netbooks or computers that just aren't powerful enough to run at a decent speed modern operating systems - grab yourself an Ubunto Server image and install that - I actually have a really old MSI Wind netbook - 2gb or Ram, 120gb hard drive and intel atom processor running an Ubunto Server 16.04 install I use for Conductor Witness tools, and various supplemental bot's and experiments. Once you learn the commands to move around directories - and with plenty of looking up guidance on google you can really start to become a master of command line. !COFFEEA

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The browser emulators are cool, but I don't think you can store things between sessions and they will have other limitation. I've had a play with some virtual machines you can download with various old operating systems. Brought back some memories. I expect this advent calendar may run again this year. An old PC or a Raspberry Pi is an alternative. I wish I'd had this stuff to play with when I was young and had more time.

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You got an upvote from Marlians.token, visit our blog to find out how we can support you.

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(Edited)

Well, it's not so bad on a relatively modern computer. Amazingly you can even compile programs in C and lua! There are also two web browsers available. You can browse the internet with a browser that runs on a system that runs in your browser :)

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It is pretty amazing :) Now, can you run an emulator in a browser of an emulator in a browser? There must be limits.

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Should be no problem given lots of RAM and CPU power, provided there are no subtle bugs in the code which could appear in such scenario.

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That is pretty awesome. I can see how that would be handy for people who maybe don't want to spin up a virtual box on their machine and run it that way. Or they don't want to dive in fully and just install it as their main OS. I have one desktop at home that is running Linux and I really don't miss Windows on it.

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The main issue I see is that it may not be possible to preserve data between sessions. It's not too hard to run a virtual machine or just buy a Raspberry Pi to run it on.

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