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Comment by jetti | Hacker News Reader

Hasn't this already been done with Java applets? Would the difference here be that instead of running Java, you could run almost any language?

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> Would the difference here be that instead of running Java, you could run > almost any language?

More than just any language - any Linux software.

And what are the dependencies? What is the lifetime of the VM? It says that Arc uses VirtualBox, does that mean I would need a full install of VirtualBox to use this?

Yes, I just tried it. The first screen on the downloaded installer says it will download & install Virtualbox, and run Virtualbox + Arc upon system startup.

VirtualBox is included in the Arc installer. It doesn't have to be downloaded or installed separately.

Congratulations! This is a great idea. If I needed port a network and/or performance critical Linux app to the web, Arc offers some unique advantages. However there is some serious competition from Java apps, jslinux, Emscripten w/ asm.js, and (P)NaCl.

I don't have a Mac, so I haven't tried out your demo yet, but ideally you should make this work like genymotion, using the existing VirualBox install in headless mode. This would also make a much quicker install option for existing vbox users. Hopefully you can avoid the mistake YouWave made of interfering with an existing vbox installs.

Where did you find the file to try it? I only saw the blogpost.

There was an example site that was linked in the blog post: http://peggo.co/

It will only work with OS X 10.7+ though.

Oh ok, that's why it worked for me then. I thought he was making the beta of Arc available already. It looks like it might solve a problem with an in-house project I've been working on at work recently.

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