Building a WebAssembly-first OS – An Adventure Into the Unorthodox - Dan Phillips, Loophole Labs
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2023-09-11

Building a WebAssembly-first OS – An Adventure Into the Unorthodox - Dan Phillips, Loophole Labs

Imagine an operating system built primarily for (and with) WebAssembly. Sounds ridiculous? We thought so too, but that didn't stop us from diving in. We'll recount this seemingly ludicrous journey, offering a rationale that silences skepticism with clear-eyed conviction.

In the throes of this experiment, we wrestled with unique challenges: Administering system calls within WebAssembly, enabling hardware compatibility, and architecting a robust security model, reinventing not just hardware monitoring, but also “process” scheduling (for an OS completely without unix processes). Each hiccup along the way will be illuminated in this talk.

As we close, we'll gaze into the unexplored horizon, charting the roadmap for a fully-functional WebAssembly-first OS. Our intention with this narrative isn't merely to share an eccentric experiment, but to spur dialogues about the future of OS design and inspire others to venture into their own uncharted territories.