HyperCore Linux: A tiny portable Linux designed for reproducibility

[ramLlama]

I like this idea, but I do not really understand who it is aimed at. The focus seems to be on reproducibility of scientific experiments and code, which is great! Many existing code artifacts are WOGSL (Works On Graduate Student's Laptop) which is the CS equivalent of "runs when parked".

So, let's break down the fields of CS for which this should be applicable:

* Systems: This won't work except for the few systems projects that are entirely in-RAM AND will work on tinycore's kernel version

* ML: This, I can see, especially with the seeming focus on dataset management. Much ML is compute-bound and the overhead of using the FUSE FS's is hopefully negligible.

So, is this focused on ML and ML-using code and experiments? If so, I think that should be clarified. I think a lot of systems folk will be (rightly or wrongly) turned away from it due to the seeming overhead of the various hyper* extensions. Not to mention that they are all written in Node/JS (Again, rightly or wrongly, many systems folk will not want to run their stuff on platforms written in JS)

I like the direction this project can go, but there seems to be a lack of focus or direction in your mission right now.

[fizixer]

> So, let's break down the fields of CS for which this should be applicable:

> So, is this focused on ML and ML-using code and experiments?

Your completely missing the point. Please look into 'Computational Science' (or Scientific Computing, or Numerical Analysis), that applies to 80%+ of all disciplines that exist today (e.g., computational physics, comp. biology, comp. economics, comp. aspects of engineering disciplines, the list goes on).

[trengrj]

I was hoping this was going to be a linux distro built reproducibly (as in same binary builds given same compiler toolchain) but was disappointed..

[mdcox]

I'm really curious as to what exactly you mean by this...does the same code through the same compiler not reliably produce the same binary? I know very little about actual compiler mechanics, but non-deterministic compilation seems really strange to me.

[0x006A]

> sudo linux boot

  /usr/local/lib/node_modules/linux/cli.js:60
    fs.accessSync(keyPath)
       ^
  TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method 'accessSync'

[mafintosh]

just fixed this. reinstall and try again

[bananaoomarang]

`npm install linux`

[xd1936]

Right? Bold move, taking that as the npm package name listing.

[LoneWolf]

The naming annoys me so does the title, it is not a Linux distribution, I stopped reading when i got to the npm part, I assume this is done in JS?

Please be explicit and say that this is NOT a linux distribution, and in all seriousess I don't understand how this can be called linux, can someone explain me?

[adamkochanowicz]

I fully support this.

[curiousjorge]

it's sort of a thug life moment for javascript.

[dingdingdang]

What speed stats would people be getting with this..? The idea of Node managing a hypervisor linux VM somehow seems unrealistic in performance terms - but I might be hugely prejudiced on this so who knows.

[moron4hire]

I don't see where it has anything to do with Node. It looks like it's using NPM to install it, but the actual running of the VM looks like it goes through the standard hypervisor of the host OS. NPM is technically separate from Node (though yes, the majority of its use is for Node modules). If it is using Node for anything, I can only imagine it is as a replacement for shell scripting.

Interesting, using NPM. Now that I think about it, it's the only package manager that I know of that runs on and is commonly used on all 3 major OSes.

[wmf]

It looks like the work is done by Hypervisor.framework and xhyve that are written in C. Hitting the FUSE filesystem won't be fast, but then neither was AuFS.

[falcolas]

Seems like a competitor for Vagrant as much as anything else. Given the ubiquity of Virtualbox and portability of its images, it seems like it will be the tool most compared.

That or docker toolbox.

[voltagex_]

https://github.com/maxogden/hypercore/blob/master/include/us... - blerk, binaries in source control.

[yoshuaw]

"15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it."

The Dat team has a solid track record creating separate packages for binaries; they're responsible for maintaining Fuse, Electron and LevelDB packages on NPM. Optimizations are likely to follow.

[weavie]

For the first time in quite a while I am actually tempted to update my mac to Yosemite. It isn't explicit, but I am fairly certain it won't work in older versions of osx.

[jimmcslim]

Yes, Yosemite was the first version to come with Hypervisor.framework

[coherentpony]

Also check out NixOS if you want a bonefide linux distribution: http://nixos.org/

[0x006A]

why is this using npm and not brew?

[mafintosh]

this is not osx specific. its gonna be installable on other platforms as well (linux/osx/windows)

[chkuendig]

yeah, I think im not alone prefering npm for (cross-platform) node packages and homebrew for (osx-specific) general-purpose utilities

[__gcmurphy]

can we stop with .js already?

[moron4hire]

Care to explain why anyone should listen to you in this regard?

[adamkochanowicz]

?