Genode OS Framework 18.11 released Dec 01, 2018

Genode's version 18.11 puts quality assurance into the spotlight, introduces the ability to host MirageOS unikernels, and improves the network stack.

According to our road map for 2018, the main topic of this release is software quality and resilience, which we addressed on multiple levels. We incorporated the Clang static code analyzer into our development workflows and enabled runtime code coverage metrics based on Gcov. Also, we integrated our existing component tests into one orchestrated on-target test automation framework based on Genode. Finally, we added a mechanism for component health monitoring to improve the resilience of Genode systems with undependable components.

The second subject we approached during the last months is Genode for network appliances and server applications. Therefore, the current release features the ability to host MirageOS unikernels as components running directly on Genode and a new SSH server component.

Further highlights are an initial version of the Genode SDK, enhanced flexibility of the GUI stack of Sculpt OS with a modularized window system and a new window layouter, improved network performance on Xilinx Zynq, and updated language support for Java and Ada.

All changes and improvements of Genode 18.11 are covered by the comprehensive release documentation.

Sculpt OS with Visual Composition (VC) Sep 27, 2018

The third version of Sculpt OS introduces a graphical user interface for installing and running software from downloadable packages.

We proudly announce the third incarnation of our Genode-based general- purpose operating system called Sculpt! This release - nicknamed Sculpt with Visual Composition - introduces a new graphical user interface for installing and deploying system components from downloadable software packages. Users no longer need any command- line skills in order to explore the system. That said, to enjoy the system to full extend, the text-based interface is still there, empowering well-versed users to customize and control the system. Sculpt is available as a ready-to-use disk image that can be booted directly from a USB stick on commodity PC hardware: Download Sculpt OS...

The release is accompanied with updated documentation that covers everything from a quick-start guide, over an architecture description, to advanced topics like building the system from source:

Genode OS Framework 18.08 released Aug 31, 2018

Genode 18.08 advances the framework's device drivers to accommodate modern PC hardware, introduces a new microcode-update mechanism for Intel CPUs, and enhances the networking and VFS infrastructure. With the new version, Sculpt OS enters the next stage by moving towards an interactive graphical user interface.

With Genode 18.08, we enter the third episode of our story of developing the Sculpt general-purpose OS. The release addresses four crucial concerns of general-purpose computing, namely the support of modern hardware, the ability to timely respond to the discovery of new CPU-level vulnerabilities by the means of applying microcode updates, the scalability of application workloads, and the interactive usability of the system. The latter is particularly exciting as Genode allows us to explore new user-interface paradigms to lay the power of capability-based security into the hands of the user.

The most prominent aspect of the current release is the framework's device-driver support, which includes the update of all Linux-based drivers to kernel version 4.16.3, a largely reworked wifi stack, the split of the USB driver into multiple components, and improved hardware compatibility of the PS/2 and network drivers. The release also introduces an experimental runtime for hosting drivers of Google's Fuchsia OS as Genode components.

Among the many further improvements are an extended Ada language runtime, added multi-processor support for our custom base-hw microkernel on x86, the ability to route network traffic between an arbitrary number of physical NICs, and a new way to select the networking stack of a component between lwIP and the Linux TCP/IP by a mere configuration change.

All improvements are covered in detail by the release documentation of version 18.08...

Sculpt OS for The Curious presented at FrOScon Jul 31, 2018

This year's FrOScon conference will host a talk of Genode developer Josef Soentgen presenting Sculpt OS.

FrOScon is an annual Open-Source and Free-Software conference in a similar spirit as FOSDEM. This year, it is held during 25th and 26th of August 2018 in Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Germany:

https://www.froscon.de/en/

Josef Soentgen of Genode Labs will present Sculpt OS. His talk will explore the current state of this Genode-based operating system. It will demonstrate how Genode's unique system design lends itself to compose a general purpose OS that puts the user in full control without sacrificing security by applying the principle of least privilege from the very beginning. If you are curious about Genode and Sculpt OS, or like to get in touch with the project, please consider attending FrOScon!

First disk-image release of Sculpt OS Jul 30, 2018

Sculpt OS is a ready-to-download general-purpose operating system based on Genode.

The recently published Genode version 18.05 was accompanied with all the ingredients needed for the second incarnation of the Sculpt general purpose OS. Two weeks later, we complemented this version with the release of a ready-to-use disk image of Sculpt OS:

https://genode.org/download/sculpt download Sculpt OS

Now, exploring Sculpt on a real machine is as easy as copying the disk image to an USB stick and booting the PC from USB. Sculpt presents itself with a graphical user interface that streamlines common steps like connecting to a wireless network or managing storage devices. The real beauty of the system, however, lies beyond this surface and is best discovered by following the documentation:

https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-tc documentation

Genode OS Framework 18.05 released May 31, 2018

With Genode 18.05, our Year of Sculpt OS continues at a rapid pace.

The version 18.05 was just released today. It contains countless of improvements motivated by Sculpt OS. For example, it introduces the ability to display text in a resolution-independent way, allows for the dynamic adjustment of user-level network routing, supports the flexible detection and management of partitions and file systems, and is able to drive USB storage devices from a great variety of vendors.

Besides the focus on Sculpt, the new version features the initial support for the Java programming language via a port of OpenJDK's HotSpot VM. Also, the Ada language support received much attention. Hardware-wise, the new version improves the drivers for NXP i.MX System-on-Chips, adds a new driver for non-volatile storage (NVMe) devices, and embraces the modern ECAM/MMCONF mechanism for accessing the PCI configuration space on PC hardware. Furthermore, the seL4 kernel and the Muen kernel have been updated to new versions.

Finally, the release is complemented with a new revision of the Genode Foundations book (PDF) that incorporates the evolutionary changes of the framework during the past year.

The entire picture is presented in detail by the release documentation of version 18.05.

New Genode mailing list May 29, 2018

The Genode mailing list and archive has been moved from Sourceforge to our own infrastructure.

Since we started the Genode project in 2008, our mailing list is the primary point of communication within the community. The mailing list and its archive used to be hosted by Sourceforge. We are grateful for this year-long service but ultimately found that our project has outgrown this solution. In particular, we became uncomfortable with the delivery of ads in the footer of messages, and we experienced outages without any chance to diagnose and fix issues by ourself.

For this reason, we decided to move the mailing list to our own infrastructure now. Please note that this is a new mailing list. Subscribers of the old list are not automatically subscribed to the new one. If you are interested in following discussions around Genode please subscribe to the new mailing list.

Sculpt for Early Adopters Mar 29, 2018

Discover the first public release of the Sculpt general-purpose operating system based on the Genode OS Framework.

Sculpt is the name of a new Genode-based operating system targeted at general-purpose computing. After having been in daily use by the entire team at Genode Labs since last autumn, we feel that the time is right to share it with a broader community of Genode enthusiasts.

Initially, the system presents itself as a fairly minimalistic base system, which then can be interactively sculpted into different shapes and forms. In contrast to traditional Genode systems, which are largely defined at system-integration time, Sculpt's structure is completely dynamic and extensible at runtime. The accompanying documentation https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-ea guides the user through this adventure.

On the way, many Genode features come into play, such as the live configuration of components, wireless networking, the GUI stack, package management, and virtualization.

Whereas the current version is targeted at early adopters, our roadmap envisions that each subsequent release will make the system more and more attractive to a broader user base.

Genode OS Framework 18.02 released Feb 28, 2018

Genode 18.02 puts emphasis on package management, updated 3rd-party software, user-level networking, and the Nim programming language.

Genode's version 18.02 kicks off the Year of Sculpt with several features on account of the Sculpt system scenario. Most prominently, we added the ability to install, deploy, and update software packages on a running Genode system.

Further highlights are the experimental use of the Nim programming language for the implementation of Genode servers, a new tracing utility that makes Genode's existing tracing infrastructure much easier to use, improvements across the entire user-level networking stack, and updates of many 3rd-party software packages.

The release is described in full detail in the release documentation.

FOSDEM 2018 recordings Feb 15, 2018

The recordings of four Genode-related FOSDEM presentations have become available.

Like every year, FOSDEM 2018 was an exciting event for us. We greatly enjoyed the microkernel developer room, which - to our delight - attracts an audience that seems to grow year after year.

Our team participated with three presentations at the developer room. Furthermore, we were excited about a talk about Componolit at the Embedded developer room, which presents the prospect of leveraging Genode on mobile platforms. Shortly after FOSDEM, recordings of all talks became available online. To recap the Genode-related talks, you can enjoy the recordings by following the links below.

"GPU resource multiplexing in component based systems"

Sebastian Sumpf at the Microkernel developer room

"Live sculpting a Genode-based operating system"

Norman Feske at the Microkernel developer room

"User-level networking on Genode"

Martin Stein at the Microkernel developer room

"Componolit - a component-based open-source platform for trustworthy mobile devices"

Alexander Senier at the Embedded developer room

Road map 2018 Jan 24, 2018

Driven by our ambition to leverage Genode as a desktop operating system, 2018 will be The Year of Sculpt.

In mid of December, we invited the Genode community to discuss our road map for 2018, taking Genode Labs' perspective as the starting point. In January, we distilled the many ideas and interests into a concrete plan and schedule: https://genode.org/about/road-map

The plan can roughly be summarized by the slogan "Year of Sculpt". Behind this slogan is our ambition to expand the user base that uses Genode as desktop operating system. This particular Genode scenario is called Sculpt as it allows the user to interactively shape the system into many different things. There will be four stages of the Sculpt system.

Sculpt for Early Adopters (EA) addresses users who are already experienced with Genode. It will be part of the 18.02 release.

Sculpt for The Curious (TC) invites people who are new to Genode but don't hesitate to use command-line tools. It is scheduled for version 18.05.

Sculpt by Visual Composition (VC) will largely replace the need for the command line by providing a graphical user interface for sculpting the system. It will be published along with version 18.08.

Sculpt as Community Experience (CE) strives to empower users to provide sculpted subsystems to other users. This version is planned for the end of the Year.

Besides the story of Sculpt, the road map features several other technical topics such as the ongoing improvement of our custom kernel and the support for the seL4 kernel, new drivers for NXP i.MX, and a Java virtual machine.

Genode at FOSDEM 2018 Jan 24, 2018

See Genode in action at the microkernel developer room at FOSDEM!

In the previous newsletter, we invited you to FOSDEM in Brussels. As a reminder, FOSDEM 2018 takes place during 3rd and 4th of February. We are happy to announce Genode's participation in FOSDEM's microkernel developer room (AW1.126) with three presentations:

Saturday 11:05 GPU resource multiplexing in component based systems Microkernel devroom (AW1.126) abstract...

Saturday 12:25 Live sculpting a Genode-based operating system Microkernel devroom (AW1.126) abstract...

Saturday 17:30 User-level networking on Genode Microkernel devroom (AW1.126) abstract...

The complete schedule of the developer room is available at https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/microkernels/.