Any Nix package, live in the browser

Any Nix package, live in the browser(fzakaria.com)

48 points by domenkozar 30 days ago | 20 comments

> we can run a Linux kernel in WebAssembly.

For a moment I thought someone did a port of Linux to wasm, but this is actually x86_64 Linux in a wasm qemu (with JIT, granted, which I suppose blurs the line). That's probably a lot more practical.

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I'm stoked about the idea of using this for code review / bug reproduction / tutorials / demos. Obviously nix already gives you the reproducibility side of things, but running on any host system with zero setup and robust sandboxing should really improve its practical usefulness. Native nix doesn't give you "try this software by clicking a link and it works without installing anything", nor " here's some completely untrusted code someone wants you to run, and that's ~fine because it's in a browser tab".

janjones 30 days ago | |

> I thought someone did a port of Linux to wasm

I think someone did that here: https://github.com/joelseverin/linux-wasm

indemnity 30 days ago |

Every damn vibe project: “Catchy hook, descriptive explanation”. Like they’ve all got their own marketing team now.

teroshan 29 days ago | |

And verbs seem to clearly be really pricey in terms of tokens

easterncalculus 30 days ago |

Seems very cool. I'm wondering what the next step would be for performance here. Trying python as suggested is quite slow so far.

  ~ # time python3 hello.py
  Hello World!
  real    0m 5.48s
  user    0m 4.11s
  sys     0m 1.24s

yjftsjthsd-h 30 days ago | |

There's a JIT, so running the same thing more than once makes it faster:

  ~ # time hello 
  Hello, world!
  real 0m 1.89s
  user 0m 0.67s
  sys 0m 1.14s
  ~ # time hello 
  Hello, world!
  real 0m 0.97s
  user 0m 0.36s
  sys 0m 0.55s

This would to me imply an obvious route of pre-warming the resumed image with your program. Or going all-in and natively compiling to wasm, but that's a much bigger lift.

orangea 30 days ago | |

I think it could be made much faster by emulating Linux system calls instead of running a real kernel, and translating x86 binaries to wasm before running (using something like cheerpx).

orangea 30 days ago |

> The first time you run a binary, it is translated from x86_64 to WebAssembly and that takes time.

If the binary is running under a real x64 linux kernel running in qemu, wouldn't that imply that the binary is never translated to wasm?

yjftsjthsd-h 30 days ago | |

This qemu JITs things to wasm as it runs

thenthenthen 30 days ago |

Ugh cant stand the LLM-isms, cool idea tho, practical? For teaching maybe?

nektro 30 days ago |

so sick, nice work!

rvz 30 days ago |

Just looked at this and wondered, how much Claude AI slop went into this project and unsurprisingly a lot of it.

The entire site reeks of Claudisms and I doubt that the author even cares or knows what they are doing. The GitHub put me off immediately.

It's quite ridiculous to see such slop here and we are just going to see more of this.

Powdering7082 29 days ago | |

The author's talks on nix go back to 2020: https://fzakaria.com/talks

I suspect they know and care

yjftsjthsd-h 30 days ago | |

It's a good idea, and the implementation works. Are there actual problems, or are you just complaining that AI was used?

rvz 30 days ago | | |

> It's a good idea, and the implementation works.

Just because something "works" doesn't not mean it makes sense to use in the long run. It is incredibly memory inefficient and will cause the user's machine to crash. Not everyone is running the latest ThinkPad or Macbook with 64GB RAM.

Without those considerations, I believe it is complete AI slop.

tomberek 29 days ago | |

The ability to quickly try out and verify ideas is valuable. This would have taken immensely more time to get to a stage to reasonable verify or dismiss as an idea otherwise. This saves time for builders.

The author cares; this is not a post-a-quick-project-as-slop-to-get-cred situation.

wrxd 30 days ago | |

Have a look at the submissions from that websites. The quantity alone indicates that the author is vibing full steam.

Nice ideas but 100% slop

teroshan 29 days ago | | |

That being said, isn't it the best use-case for slop? Generating working, interactive ideas to sell an idea and kick-start a discussion to see if it's anything worth pursuing?

Rewriting it after that first MVP with a first round of inputs is better engineering anyway, right?