kernel-wasm VS firejail

WASM is not related to JavaScript in any way, it's just a formal definition (see the spec) for a bytecode and a VM that executes it. One of the problems that WASM tries to solve for web development is to get away from JS because it's such a mess. It's unfortunate that WASM has "Web" in its name, as it's rally not just for Web: there are many embedded runtimes, for example, popular proxy server Envoy supports WASM for writing filters (aka extensions) and there's even WASM runtime for the Linux kernel.

Wasm started in the web, but has since been ported even to the Linux kernel [0]. It seems perfect for situation where you near machine code levels of performance, but don't want to carry different binaries for different CPU architectures - exactly what you want from a plugin system. It also allows far greater isolation than "real" compiled code.

[0] https://github.com/wasmerio/kernel-wasm

bubblewrap is designed as a low-level too. There is nothing quick and dirty about it. It disallows everything by default and you have to be explicit about what you want to share with the host. If your application needs complex permissions/resources, then you will need to have a complex bubblewrap command line.

Once you have figured out which permissions/resources you need for a given program, you can wrap the command line invocation in a shell script.

If you want other people to do the work of defining permissions/resources, then have a look at firejail: https://github.com/netblue30/firejail

Firejail is cool: https://github.com/netblue30/firejail

Linux namespaces/cgroups but nowhere near as heavy as Docker.

I use it when I want to limit the memory of a Python script:

```

Firejail can also be a useful option, though no good if you're on Mac https://firejail.wordpress.com/

Uses the same Linux primitives as docker etc, but can be a bit more ergonomic for this use case

Firejail, Flatpak (which uses Bubblewrap under the hood), and Snap (which uses AppArmor) all use the same underlying technology: Linux namespaces.

This question comes up a lot, and has been answered here: https://github.com/netblue30/firejail/wiki/Frequently-Asked-...

TL;DR: Firejail has much more comprehensive features than Flatpak (Bubblewrap). Firejail also has more comprehensive network support, support for AppArmor and SELinux, and easier seccomp filtering.

Compared to Snap (which uses AppArmor), Firejail is compatible with AppArmor and again goes above and beyond with a lot of additional features.

Wonderful little tool, too bad you must chain various exec calling tools to get cgroups (a bit akin to `ionice ... nice ... cmd`) and Linux users namespaces can't allow UNIX sockets while preventing network access (I think?).

Migrated from Firejail when its complexity annoyed me too much and I hit https://github.com/netblue30/firejail/issues/3001 (Firejail doesn't like parens or brackets in --put/--get parameters) to a badly NIH version using bwrap and bash to have "profiles":

Firejail does this. The profile database is the two "profile" directories in https://github.com/netblue30/firejail/tree/master/etc

What do you mean by a Firefox container? Do you mean FireJail?