The name really irks me. I read the explanation, but really what you are talking about has nothing to do with linux, and while it might philosophically share goals with unix it really sounds like you are more talking about small tools (although, I don't know where to find or write those tools in your thing) and using filesystem api:s. If I understand correctly this really has nothing to do with linux (besides some unix philosophy)?
Considering that there are things like jslinux (https://bellard.org/jslinux/) and other projects that actually run linux in a browser I think the name is bad.
I'd also say that I tried the demo and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. I know that the github readme said that it is not "about" the DE, but I don't really know what it's about besides that?
Rather than trying to answer the same basic question in slightly different terms, let me try a completely different tactic... perhaps the entire question of "actually doing things" needs to be addressed in a grand, cultural kind of way. When, for example, people are driving around in their cars and going to convenience stores, they are "actually doing things". Those kinds of things aren't very sustainable, though.
It should be pretty apparent that ours is a finite world, and there is going to need to be a hell of a lot of soul searching in order to figure out how to make this modern human experiment of ours actually work. So, it might help to think about looking at the web as the nervous system of the world. As long as there is nothing but blinding commercialism (bordering on sheer propaganda) traversing this nervous system, then it is hard to envision how our modern age can "end up" very well.
But if there can be a way to start injecting doses of sanity into the world's nervous system, then perhaps the younger generations will start being able to breathe easier when it comes to their long term prospects. In my opinion, there is a good possibility that getting people to start using the web under much more thoughtful and rational terms can only help matters.
Hacker News has itself been an interesting social experiment from a very successful capitalist enterprise. Perhaps it can start stimulating "real world" social experiments involving projects like Linux on the Web (or whatever the best name for it happens to be) so that we can all start turning the corner in terms of finding ways of life that can balance the needs of private things (like businesses) and public things (like human communities).
But none of this is Linux: JSLinux runs an x86 emulator build using emscripten (https://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html), with enough hardware emulated (including a 9P filesystem and a VirtIO block device) to make the whole thing possible. I've not tested this, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could get docker containers or even kubernetes running on it (given all the syscalls should be there).
You didn't answer the question: "What does it actually do?"
I get that you have a vision, but when I run the code you wrote it does something. That something is hopefully something you designed it to do. What is that something?
Considering that there are things like jslinux (https://bellard.org/jslinux/) and other projects that actually run linux in a browser I think the name is bad.
I'd also say that I tried the demo and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. I know that the github readme said that it is not "about" the DE, but I don't really know what it's about besides that?
What does it actually do?