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Genode Labs Newsletter - February/March 2011
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Content
1. Genode OS Framework version 11.02 released
2. Youtube: Norman Feske presents Genode at Software Freedom Day
3. Effective Qt4 development with Qoost
4. New and exciting challenges for the Genode OS Framework
1. Genode OS Framework version 11.02 released
---------------------------------------------
End of February, we proudly released the version 11.02 of the Genode
OS Framework. Our development focus for this version was to further
enhance the platform support of the framework. With the new support
of the Fiasco.OC kernel, users of Genode can profit from capability-
based security and the thorough hardware support provided by this
kernel developed at the Dresden University of Technology. Furthermore,
in order to support FPGA-based system-on-chip platforms with Genode,
we introduced a custom kernel implementation especially geared towards
softcore CPUs. The first version of this kernel enables running the
Genode base system on the Xilinx MicroBlaze CPU architecture. Finally,
we have upgraded Genode's platform support for the NOVA hypervisor to
version 0.4. Thanks to these improvements, the framework has become
able to run on 8 different kernel platforms, providing its users with
unrivaled flexibility for developing special-purpose operating systems.
The most significant functional addition is a new runtime environment
for executing GNU userland application directly on Genode. Even though
in an early stage, the execution environment is already able to run
several programs of the GNU Coretils with no modifications.
For more detailed information about the new version, please refer to:
http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/11.02
2. Youtube: Norman Feske presents Genode at Software Freedom Day
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In autumn 2010, we had been invited for a talk at the Software Freedom
Day event in Amsterday. Now, the organizers of the event have published
the video footage of the talks. In his presentation, Norman Feske
shortly introduces the company Genode Labs, explains the Genode OS
architecture, and supports the presented ideas with a number of live
demonstrations. Indeed, the talk was held using the Genode OS running
on the presentation laptop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1IMV3FJO7Q
3. Effective Qt4 development with Qoost
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At Genode Labs, we are currently conducting several projects involving
Qt4. Whereas Qt4 is an extremely powerful framework with an amazing
functionality, it partially prevents, complicates, or discourages the
use of certain C++ language features, most importantly templates and
the aggregation of objects. Consequently, Qt4 application code tends
to contain code duplications and redundancies that we'd like to avoid.
Furthermore, we found that certain Qt4 mechanisms are inconvenient to
use, most prominently its multilingual support. To make the development
of Qt4 applications more enjoyable, we created a tool set in the form
of a small template library called Qoost. As we observed that this
library significantly improved our Qt4 experience, it may be useful
for developers outside of Genode Labs. Hence, we decided to make
Qoost publicly available as a MIT-licensed Open-Source project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qoost/
4. New and exciting challenges for the Genode OS Framework
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As the development of the Genode OS Framework proceeds at a rapid
pace, we feel inspired to apply the framework to a growing number of
use cases and to reach out for a wider range of functionality. We
collect our ideas for future challenges at a dedicated Wiki page:
http://genode.org/community/wiki/Challenges
This month, this collection underwent a huge update, revealing the
many fields where we see Genode fit. The suggestions reach from rather
controversial topics such as "Microkernelizing Linux", over possible
application scenarios ("Trusted PDF reader for E-Government use"), to
research-focused projects such as the use of abstract languages for
implementing systems-level problems. If you are interested in having
a glimpse at the future of Genode, please enjoy browsing the
challenges page.
About the newsletter
--------------------
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Best regards
--
Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
Genode Labs
http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org
Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
