9fans - fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM
@ 2020-11-17 14:06 tlaronde
  2020-11-17 15:35 ` hiro
  2020-11-17 15:42 ` Pouya Tafti
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: tlaronde @ 2020-11-17 14:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

Fabrice Bellard has developed a VM in JavaScript (!!!) allowing to
run an OS in a browser. See: https://bellard.org/jslinux/

This was brought to my attention by a teacher wanting to teach TeX and
litterate programming to students without the need for them to install
anything. This is done for kerTeX see:

http://kertex.kergis.com/en/jslinux.html

What can be the use of this? First, for this very kind of usage 
(allowing an audience to use software without requiring installation)
or for demonstration purposes (instead of trial CDROM for example).

But since what is lost by the emulation can be compensated by changing
the OS, it could perhaps be tempting for someone to try to put plan9 on
the VM (I don't speak about kerTeX; just as a general responsiveness
comparison).

And furthermore, since Inferno, for the very superficial view I have
about it---I spent a very sparse time on Plan9 but never managed to
get to Inferno---, was designed if I'm not mistaken, to be able
with a small memory footprint to do what was done, long ago, with
Java applets, it could be tempting, in this area of teaching being
done at a distance, to compare the speed and the responsiveness of
Inferno vs JS---if Inferno can accept apps not only with its language
but in pure C too, I can probably make kerTeX work on it too.

Just my 2cents.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1475b04c2ecf9be0-M858669ad25a690f2ecc07685
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM
  2020-11-17 14:06 [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM tlaronde
@ 2020-11-17 15:35 ` hiro
  2020-11-17 17:08   ` tlaronde
  2020-11-17 15:42 ` Pouya Tafti
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: hiro @ 2020-11-17 15:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

i'm slightly disappointed that you're booting alpine and not plan9 in there

my biggest gripe: the delays - those draws are lagging behind my
physical mouse by nearly a second. and i'm not too far, it seems we're
all only 2ms away from the same locations in france. (that's 28ms
total from here).

i know drawterm to ovh is rather smooth from my location, so might be
worth trying to optimize the graphics implementation here.

possibly more important for those students: i am unable to resize the
window with the instructions so i can't see the line-ending.

in comparison to how long it takes to boot in the browser, it might be
faster to install a VM framework and bootstrap a new VM, though i
admit that would be including much more manual labour, too.

very entertaining though :D

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1475b04c2ecf9be0-Mf8c6e047ce9faeb5f9ceeaa5
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM
  2020-11-17 14:06 [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM tlaronde
  2020-11-17 15:35 ` hiro
@ 2020-11-17 15:42 ` Pouya Tafti
  2020-11-17 17:09   ` tlaronde
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: Pouya Tafti @ 2020-11-17 15:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 771 bytes --]



On Tue, 17 Nov 2020, at 15:06, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote:
> Fabrice Bellard has developed a VM in JavaScript (!!!) allowing to
> run an OS in a browser. See: https://bellard.org/jslinux/
> 
> This was brought to my attention by a teacher wanting to teach TeX and
> litterate programming to students without the need for them to install
> anything. 

Even if you didn't want to install anything, why run an entire VM+OS+application in the browser, as opposed to a lightweight client talking to a server?

Just a thought.

Pouya
------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1475b04c2ecf9be0-Ma46c79a9b9d6d4417e3b590e
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1700 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM
  2020-11-17 15:35 ` hiro
@ 2020-11-17 17:08   ` tlaronde
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: tlaronde @ 2020-11-17 17:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 04:35:23PM +0100, hiro wrote:
> i'm slightly disappointed that you're booting alpine and not plan9 in there
> 

"I" am not booting anything: I'm riding piggy-back on JSLinux: I just
added kerTeX on top of this and, FWIW, the union of the filesystems is
done with the 9P protocol (once more: I didn't make it: it is the way 
the whole thing has been made by Fabrice Bellard.

> my biggest gripe: the delays - those draws are lagging behind my
> physical mouse by nearly a second. and i'm not too far, it seems we're
> all only 2ms away from the same locations in france. (that's 28ms
> total from here).
> 
> i know drawterm to ovh is rather smooth from my location, so might be
> worth trying to optimize the graphics implementation here.
> 
> possibly more important for those students: i am unable to resize the
> window with the instructions so i can't see the line-ending.
> 
> in comparison to how long it takes to boot in the browser, it might be
> faster to install a VM framework and bootstrap a new VM, though i
> admit that would be including much more manual labour, too.

I must say that I think it is a supplementary, temporary solution.

When I will have finally fix the compilation and installation in MS
Windows, kerTeX will install rapidly on almost anything. So there
shouldn't really be a need, at least for TeX and al.

> 
> very entertaining though :D

Yes. But this shows perhaps too why the browsers have become such fat
beasts: if they can even make that...
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1475b04c2ecf9be0-M79c482c8762ac467c234a91e
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

* Re: [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM
  2020-11-17 15:42 ` Pouya Tafti
@ 2020-11-17 17:09   ` tlaronde
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: tlaronde @ 2020-11-17 17:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 9fans

On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 04:42:02PM +0100, Pouya Tafti wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2020, at 15:06, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote:
> > Fabrice Bellard has developed a VM in JavaScript (!!!) allowing to
> > run an OS in a browser. See: https://bellard.org/jslinux/
> > 
> > This was brought to my attention by a teacher wanting to teach TeX and
> > litterate programming to students without the need for them to install
> > anything. 
> 
> Even if you didn't want to install anything, why run an entire VM+OS+application in the browser, as opposed to a lightweight client talking to a server?
> 
> Just a thought.

There are obviously other ways to do it. But I know from experience that
when you have to deal with some IT managers in big organizations,
requiring to install anything is an ordeal, specially if it is not MS
Windows.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                    http://kertex.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

------------------------------------------
9fans: 9fans
Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T1475b04c2ecf9be0-M4504f46121d13225dd6118d2
Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-11-17 17:10 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-11-17 14:06 [9fans] Plan9 and Inferno and the JS VM tlaronde
2020-11-17 15:35 ` hiro
2020-11-17 17:08   ` tlaronde
2020-11-17 15:42 ` Pouya Tafti
2020-11-17 17:09   ` tlaronde

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).