I like to say Fabrice creates side projects that others spend their entire careers maintaining.

I knew about QEMU, ffmpeg, his LTE stuff, and QuickJS. I had no idea xterm.js started with him too.

This produces

        attempted to munmap
        ------------[ cut here ]------------
        WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 36 at kernel/exit.c:812 0x00000000
        CPU: 3 PID: 36 Comm: sh Not tainted 6.1.132 #
        Stack:
            at vmlinux.o.__warn (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/vmlinux-NLTKI6YG.wasm:wasm-function[278]:0x17655)
            at vmlinux.o.warn_slowpath_fmt (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/vmlinux-NLTKI6YG.wasm:wasm-function[279]:0x1772b)
            at vmlinux.o.do_exit (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/vmlinux-NLTKI6YG.wasm:wasm-function[329]:0x1985e)
            at vmlinux.o.task_entry_inner (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/vmlinux-NLTKI6YG.wasm:wasm-function[154]:0x12249)
            at vmlinux.o.task_entry (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/vmlinux-NLTKI6YG.wasm:wasm-function[153]:0x12155)
            at self.onmessage (https://linux.tombl.dev/dist/worker-MHWHWELT.js:151:53)
        ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

This brings back memories. I haven't looked at it in a while, but I'm glad to see the fork[1] of my fork[2] from 12 years ago is still thriving. Looks like it's been mostly rewritten. Probably for the better.

[1] https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js [2] https://github.com/chjj/term.js

Awesome, I suppose it's more energy efficient then jslinux and can be run on iOS, it might be a good alternative for A-Shell or iSH. I tried it on my a MacBook, but the keyboard input doesn't register.

is there any command working ? ps, cat, vi, ed .. they all crash (I don't know enough about embedding busybox to know what to do)

Yeah why don't we learn what he wants and just give it to him, in return he'll properly rewrite all the broken shit we have. Phones, operating systems, desktop environments, countries, appstores, etc.

I love this guy. Half of the world's android development has been made easier due to his courtesy, and it's getting more (his qemu is ubiquitous)

100% agree, would like to meet that guy one day

Also the same person who wrote LZEXE, which might be familiar to people who used DOS.

I'd love to know how he chooses what to work on. I wonder if he just follows his interest?

Don't forget VLC! Probably his most well-known project.

https://taws.ch/ (Amiga OS)

https://amiga.oszx.co/

https://www.file-hunter.com/AMIGA/

https://www.file-hunter.com/MSX/ (MSX! via WebMSX)

Is this list just 16bit?

The answer is simple: Bellard can recall all 50K lines of context, while most can't. I too happen to have a larger working memory and only later realized that my threshold for files and functions is way higher than most others. The dogma is only required when the file is to be read and written by multiple people.

I work on that codebase (we forked it off to QuickJS-ng) and while daunting at first, it's somewhat easy to work with, with the right editor! Many of them choke on such a large file, alas.

While it being a very large file, it's sorted somewhat semantically, so it's easy to work on adding a new iterator method, for example, since they are all close to each other.

Because people you’re working with are not Fabrice. It is easier to say “don’t do X at all” than explain when it is safe to break the rule.

Also, this would depend on language of choice. JVM, for example, might not inline function above certain threshold of bytecode instructions.

Case in point: .NET's garbage collector which is a single 54k loc C++ file.

Rather one long function than does one thing well than multiple function that are strongly coupled and difficult to reason about. Programmers who apply dogmas can be harmful.

I think this person creates these marvels entirely by himself. There is no need for collaboration rules.

In the age of advanced IDEs/text editors with goto definition, find references/usage, fuzzy search, etc, what is even the point of multiple files?

I never navigate by files in my code bases, it's all based on search and "jump to" type navigation.

Fun fact: it is based on TinyEMU too.

https://github.com/container2wasm/container2wasm?tab=readme-...

I don't remotely want to use Windows 2000 again, but it is interesting to see a version of Windows where the UI was consistent. Currently it is a mishmash of four generations of GUI toolkits, some UI is in one style, some UI is another, etc, etc

Related:

"Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft. Readers say it's all been downhill since Clippy"

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/11/windows_2000_best_mic...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43653421

I tried to install Visual Basic 6 on it but couldn't get past SSL errors in the installed Firefox version to even download the ISO. Sad.

The reason I've been on Xfce since at least 2010, it still works the same.

I feel like open-source inherently has alignment with users and blockers to enshitification

Ok, it looks like he runs his own company: https://www.amarisoft.com/company/about-us

Bootlin is a French company and they are a major open source contributor. I worked with them and I recommend them.

French tech used to have a reputation for Renault old car quality, but I did not see it. Even in Renault and Citroen I came to admire them. On the other hand working with German SE is hard because they are incredibly set on not invented here. My generalisation for whatever it is worth.

In general the issue of Europe tech scene is simple: we suck at selling and optimise for resource efficiency(competitive salary means never pay above rate no matter what). Americans optimise for growth and will risk paying for higher so they can amortise costs with growth.

On a final note, where I come from there is lots of sneer that France is a dump due to immigration. While that is a point of view, it is definitely true they have also brain drained their colonies and have very capable productive individuals coming from there. Myself I had my master’s tutor from cot-de-Ivoir and in bootlin also worked with top of the shelf engineers that have non francophone names.

Can you name some that invite comparison with FB?

https://barebox.org/demo being the correct link..

Are there any open details on how the VM / container / WASM-native approaches are implemented?

It only allows bellard.org, not www.bellard.org. Changing the domain loads the same webpage, but with CORS working as intended.

Pretty sure this is possible already... What's stopping you?

I find it perfect for technical interviews over screen sharing, since we test for some basic degree of ease on remote linux systems.

This emulator does basically the same but is much more speed optimized. It uses the OpenRISC architecture and even has networking. For what do you want to use such an emulator?

[0] https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k

On the TinyEMU page? https://bellard.org/tinyemu/

Not by him but it does exist

https://ktock.github.io/container2wasm-demo/

Probably because it's super cool

If you host your own OS image that auto-starts a browser that runs JSLinux and a config file like https://www.bellard.org/jslinux/alpine-x86.cfg, you can create such a link yourself. CORS may be your biggest enemy, there's no reason JSLinux can't do what you're proposing (albeit extremely slowly).