Open-source developer Joel Severin today announced his work on porting the Linux kernel to WebAssembly and has successffully gotten the kernel up and running within WASM-capable web browsers.

This WebAssembly port of the Linux kernel is up and running basic programs from a shell within a web browser. But there are stability issues and it didn’t take me long either to trigger crashes for this Linux kernel WASM port when running within Google Chrome.

Joel Severin described of this WASM kernel effort:

“Now, this is a technology demo, it’s to show what’s possible. There are some things where what we have today makes this more painful than it has to be. The good news is that if there is a will to go forward with Linux and Wasm, at least I don’t see why the current restrictions cannot be lifted. But, there would need to be a commitment from Linux and Wasm people, not to mention the whole ecosystem around it, to actually implement those changes. Some fundamentals of each platform would need to change for a smooth experience, especially so on the Wasm side.”

Those curious can learn more about this hobbyist WebAssembly port of the Linux kernel via the LKML posting.

The example demo of the WebAssembly Linux kernel port can be tried out via the GitHub Pages. The code including patched versions of the Linux kernel, LLVM, Musl libc, initramfs, and BusyBox can be found via this GitHub repository.