Someone tried, and mostly managed, to run Linux in an Excel spreadsheet

Weird Computing: As the "can it run Doom" phenomenon clearly demonstrates, people will try to do the weirdest things with extensible, accessible software platforms and applications. Excel, a program with powerful computation capabilities that's been around for almost 40 years, is no different. And it can seemingly run Linux. A lone developer known as "NSG650" recently unveiled the Linux In Excel project, which, as you might guess, forces the Linux kernel to run within a Microsoft Excel environment. The project isn't exactly groundbreaking, and the Linux experience it provides is, by the developer's own admission, quite buggy. Nonetheless, it's worth mentioning as yet another hacking feat that no other coder has dared – or even thought – to attempt. Linux In Excel leverages mini-rv32ima, an open-source project designed to implement the RISC-V instruction set in an emulated environment. The mini-rv32ima emulator provides a partial RISC-V implementation. It consists of about 400 lines ... Read full article.