A Linux system running over JavaScript [LWN.net]

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 13:36 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
Parent article: A Linux system running over JavaScript

I'm amazed at how fast it is.

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A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 14:50 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (4 responses)

Indeed, the boot seems faster than on a real 486, if my memory doesn't mislead. It of course doesn't probe hardware, but the boot messages seem to go by faster too. Perhaps not surprising: those were 66 MHz machines, and javascript emulator on a 3 GHz machine is likely faster...

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 14:53 UTC (Tue) by PhracturedBlue (subscriber, #4193) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, I got about 20 bogomips from /proc/cpuinfo when running on my laptop, but still, I agree, it feels very usable from a quick tour.

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 19:01 UTC (Tue) by sjlyall (guest, #4151) [Link] (2 responses)

I got around 20 BogoMips as well. Did a quick benchmark with a simple shell loop and it was 400 times slower than my PC ( 4822 BogoMips ).

According to the BogoMips website 20 is around a 486DX/40 ( That is 40MHz ) which is roughly the PC I had in 1994 (running Linux).

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 18, 2011 9:47 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, curiously I did get the same BogoMips (20.21), both in Firefox 4 and Chromium, on a virtual machine and on the host OS, which seems weird...

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 18, 2011 12:35 UTC (Wed) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link]

Seems reasonable - if there's no attempt to sync. the emulated RTC to wall time, the bogomips calculation will just give emulated instructions per tick of the emulated clock, which should be independent of the browser or host (and even more useless than normal bogomips as a performance estimator).

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 15:01 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (7 responses)

> I'm amazed at how fast it is.

I'd be amazed even if it were slow!

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 15:05 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (6 responses)

...was slow. A little midlands creeping in there...

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 15:16 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]

"were slow" is correct - it's the subjunctive.

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 17, 2011 15:19 UTC (Tue) by tseaver (guest, #1544) [Link] (4 responses)

"...if it were slow" is actually correct here, because the clause is subjunctive (a hypothetical-but-not-true case).

A Linux system running over JavaScript

Posted May 18, 2011 0:09 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (3 responses)

The subjunctive appears to be disappearing from American English at a rapid rate, and soon only Brits, pedantic Americans, and students of English as a second language will know what it is. Perhaps this is part of language evolution; around 1600 English still had Germanic verb endings (he maketh, thou makest) and they all went away.

Grammar pundits

Posted May 18, 2011 4:00 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (2 responses)

In fact they are both right, in England as elsewhere, and have been as long as there's been an English. "Were" makes it a subjunctive construction, where "was" just makes it trivially conditional. The subjunctive isn't really being lost, it's just falling out of fashion, as it's done before and may have many opportunities to do again.

In the meantime, do you drive a car, or an automobile, or a motor vehicle? Is that a gadget or a device? Is 'a' or 0x61 right? In all cases, the answer is (for inclusive interpretations of "or") yes.

Grammar pundits

Posted May 18, 2011 9:12 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the original commenter's confusion lay in the observation that in various northern English dialects "were" has replaced "was" in various unconditional constructs, such as "I were going" and "he were eating", giving "was" fewer appearances than may have seemed fair. Having said that, I imagine that "was" could get introduced in the original case by speakers of those dialects.

Grammar pundits

Posted May 19, 2011 16:45 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

You are correct. Sorry for starting such an off-topic sub-thread. It were bad!