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https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
Erlang on Xen.
But also one of today's unlucky 10K as it hasn't been updated for 10 years.
In How I fell in love with Erlangcloudozer
ling
C2014–2025
cloudozer / ling
ling
Erlang on Xen
22Distinct people
24Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
826GitHub stars
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What it is
Erlang on Xen
GitHub
Where it is used
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year24 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-05-02 10:54:09 UTC to 2025-11-11 13:52:55 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
LING
Wikipedia: -ling, an English diminutive suffix
Erlang on Xen
Quick Start
The easy way is to use pre-built railing utility:
Grab a binary named railing-<version> from releases.
Rename the binary to railing and move it to your Erlang project directory.
Create the image and the domain configuration file:
./railing image
Boot the Xen domain and get the familiar Erlang shell:
xl create -c domain_config
How to build/hack LING?
See HACKING.md.
Using railing
Run railing without options to get help.
To generate the image and the domain configuration file use the image
subcommand:
./railing image
This instructs railing to scan all subdirectories for *.beam files. All files
found are embedded into the Xen image and become accessible during runtime.
Certain subdirectories can be excluded from the search using -x option.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
24 sourcesOn a tangential note, does anyone here remember Erlang on Xen [0]? It's a project from a decade ago, allowing you to package your code to run directly on the hypervisor without an OS. I really liked that approach and am wondering why it seems to have hit a dead end.
[0] https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
In Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OSFYI, erlang && elixir workloads can run on Nanos: https://github.com/nanovms/ops-examples/tree/master/elixir .
I do understand what you are asking for though. There used to be an older project called erlang-on-xen: https://github.com/cloudozer/ling .
It'd be great to see this idea revisited although you'll need to create some sort of new handling/framework.
In Running Postgres as a UnikernelBEAM isn't the only runtime possible with green threads. OTP is just the libraries.
Lots of people have written alternatives to BEAM. The only problem they run into is that BEAM is very good, and would be tough to beat. I was an admirer of Erlang on Xen: https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
In DockYard R&D: FireFly Optimizes Your Elixir CompilationI'm still sad nanokernels or nanokernel-like never took off.
I also remember clicking around Ling (Erlang on Xen, sadly no longer active [1]) where the whole VM could boot up, service the request, and shut down in less time than it takes a cloud to start spinning up an instance :)
[1] https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
In Fly Machines: An API for Fast-Booting VMs> It is ported to every major flavour of OS.
There also used to be an implementation of the BEAM VM directly on Xen: https://github.com/cloudozer/ling / https://web.archive.org/web/20190507184436/https://erlangonx...
In Lisp in SpaceNo, it was not Jitsu. Jitsu is based on MiragOS/OCaml, Erlang-on-Xen was also a Xen-based unikernel like MirageOS but was (as you can guess) Erlang specific. I think you can now find it at https://github.com/cloudozer/ling .
In The RustyHermit Unikernelreminds me of: https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
In OTP 23For any "How do I...X?" question involving connecting two pieces of software together in a different way, the first thing I try to do is look at the API(s) that connects them. In the case of a program and the OS, it's the system calls, device drivers, and standard libraries.
There have been efforts to provide the capability of running a program without an OS before, but any such effort is going to need to provide the system calls and standard libraries used by the program, and the infrastructure to support it (device drivers, management, etc.). That that point it becomes a mini-OS.
An example is Erlang on Xen. Xen is more often run with a guest OS running inside it, and then the program runs within that guest os. The http://erlangonxen.org/ folks made Ling (https://github.com/cloudozer/ling), software that enables an Erlang BEAM VM to be
Read the rest
run directly on Xen, and thereby run a single Erlang program on Ling.
That's a shame, because Erlang as a unikernel already exists (as https://github.com/cloudozer/ling, unfortunately unmaintained). I'd be really keen on seeing an Erlang port to the Solo5 API, which would give you KVM/bhyve/OpenBSD vmm/Muen/others to run on.
In Unikernels: No Longer an Academic Exercise?Shame https://github.com/cloudozer/ling seems to have stalled.
In Unikernels: No Longer an Academic Exercise?is Zerg related to Ling? It seems like this project has (sadly) died out. Anyone know the current status?
https://github.com/cloudozer/ling/issues/141
In Zerg: Boot a VM instance per request, all in under 250 msThere is even a separately implemented BEAM VM for running directly on Xen hypervisor:
https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
An impressively done book on BEAM instruction sets:
https://github.com/cloudozer/ling/tree/master/doc
There is even a handy dandy online instruction set completion search:
http://erlangonxen.org/more/beam
In The BEAM Book – A Description of the Erlang RTS and the Virtual Machine BEAMI'm pretty sure this has been abandoned. Hasn't had any updates in a really long time. "Latest commit bc97a26 on 12 Oct 2015".
One of the contributors recently wrote: maximk commented on 25 May "All recent updates to the code were customer-driven. New users mean new updates. The likely application area for this is NFV, modular software for telecoms. No definite plans"
https://github.com/cloudozer/ling
In NFV Platforms with MirageOS UnikernelsShowing the 15 most recent of 24 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.