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The surprising attention on sprites, exe.dev, and shellbox
~devexe.devhostinglinux.hostingproduct reviewsvirtual machines
lalitm.com Feb 4, 2026

Summary

Over the last few weeks, three new products have announced themselves on Hacker News to great success, each making the frontpage:

  • Sprites (fly.io) with 508 votes and hit #7

  • exe.dev with 457 votes and hit #2

  • shellbox.dev with 316 votes and hit #4

All three have a very simple pitch: they will give you full access to Linux virtual machines to act as a sandboxed developer environment in the cloud.