Genode OS Framework / News: Recent posts

With the tailwind of the Sculpt 24.04 release, Genode 24.05 comes with the following highlights. First, Sculpt OS can now be run on our custom microkernel, which is a landmark on our road to root our entire software stack in a foundation devoid of third-party code in privileged CPU mode. Further, the new ability of seamlessly using the GNU debugger on top of Sculpt OS is a game changer for developers. The flexible assignment of USB devices to components and virtual machines is one of many usability advances, beside accessible suspend-resume support on PC hardware.... read more

This release focuses on Sculpt OS usability and, thus, brings a diversity of new user-visible features: support for 4K displays, initial support for I2C touchpads in modern Intel notebooks, experimental support for suspend/resume, fine-grained assignment of USB devices to applications and VMs, and new audio-mixing capabilities.

Seasoned users will immediately recognize the new power of the component-management UI, offering easy control over optional features, software providers, and software installation. Among many little user-interface improvements, the component graph and configuration interface have become scrollable, boosting the interactive user experience.... read more

The fresh release commences year 2024 with a profound redesign of our audio infrastructure that addresses routing and mixing of multi-channel audio streams at flexible sample rates, the dynamic starting and removal of audio sources and sinks, and latency optimization. Another highlight is the new feature of using Sculpt OS as a remote test target for the Goa SDK during application development. Now, Genode applications can be developed and tested in a quick and uniform way, regardless of whether you're testing directly on a Linux-based development environment, on a Sculpt PC reachable via a local network, or on a PinePhone connected to the same wireless access point.... read more

Genode 23.11 is dominated by deeply technical topics. First, we addressed a long wished-for architectural feature and implemented support for IOMMUs in our user-level platform driver. This initial step adds a driver for Intel DMA remapping units but paves the way for kernel-agnostic DMA-protected operation on all modern microkernels supported by Genode. Also, we modernized the framework's virtualization interface across kernel and (as far as feasible) instruction-set architectures. Last, we reworked the build system for optimized handling of shared libraries with ABIs and added improved tooling for use and distribution of debug binaries.... read more

Sculpt OS 23.10 makes metering and power-management options of modern PC CPUs available via an interactive user interface. One can watch the temperature of each CPU core, monitor the individual CPU frequencies, switch between power profiles, and reveal details about power draw. Beyond the CPU power controls, we generally improved support for modern Intel-based laptops. For example, features like battery monitoring, keyboard backlight control, and external displays just work now on the Framework Gen 12 laptop.... read more

The slogan of the current release is developer tooling and, thus, the two headline features introduce a new multi-component debug monitor and extend the Goa tool with support for working with multiple projects.

The debug monitor reapproaches Genode's GDB debugging support with smooth on-target debugging in Sculpt OS as final goal. It can transparently replace the Init component and be used to debug multi-component runtime scenarios by GDB inferiors. The Goa tool evolves into an all-encompassing alternative to Genode's traditional work flows for developing, porting, and publishing applications. With this release, runtime testing with Goa gets extremely flexible and handling of multiple Goa projects becomes a no brainer.... read more

Genode 23.05 is here and brings a colorful bouquet of new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Most prominently two years after the previous update, we introduce our new tool chain based on recent GCC 12.3, binutils 2.40, and GDB 13.1. The update gave us the opportunity to switch from C++17 to C++20 as default setting and benefit from modern C++ niceties. A highlight of the release is evolving Goa tool, which now enables the use of existing SDKs like Lomiri or Rust cargo for Genode.... read more

With Genode 23.02 we tightly follow our road map laid out in January. The release is accompanied by the first official system image of the mobile version of Sculpt OS for the PinePhone. It features a [https://genodians.org/nfeske/2023-01-05-mobile-user-interface - custom user interface], voice calls and mobile-data connectivity, on-target software installation and system update, device controls (battery, brightness, volume, mic, reset, shutdown), and a variety of installable software. Much noteworthy are the integrated GPU support and the ready-to-use Chromium-based Morph web browser.... read more

The just released Genode 22.11 addresses a variety of topics from least-privilege device drivers to virtualization improvements on ARM and x86 with the following highlights.

The first notable improvement is the completion of our year-long effort to a unified cross-platform device-driver infrastructure. The uniform use of the generic platform-driver interface renders the I/O-related foundation of the system much more dependable and clear. Next, the current version adds support for Intel Gen12/Iris Xe to our accelerated graphics stack and hugely improves robustness and performance of the GPU multiplexer component. Further, the release includes all ingredients for an integrated hardware-software co-design workflow with Genode on Xilinx Zynq. This enables the development of IP cores for the FPGA programmable logic and Genode components in tandem and allows system designs that include hardware reconfiguration at runtime.... read more

Today, we released Sculpt OS 22.10, a maintenance release of our Genode-based general-purpose OS. It imposes a new rigid regime to the management of low-level devices, improves USB hotplug support (including virtual-machine passthrough), and comes with numerous performance optimizations.

https://genode.org/download/sculpt

Genode 22.08 wades into the immense breadth and depth of a phone variant of Sculpt OS. The diversity of topics comprises telephony, mobile-data connectivity, custom touch-oriented user interface, mobile Chromium-based Morph browser, as well as support for USB, SD card, Mali-400 GPU, and audio control on the PinePhone. Beyond that, the current release includes an update to Qt 5.15.2, support for USB PKCS#11 tokens and ECM networking, enhanced tooling for system tracing, improved network performance, as well as optimized drivers ported from Linux.... read more

The current release takes care of all planned items on our road map. First, it adds WireGuard VPN to our toolbox and, thereby, enables easy-to-use state-of-the-art network security as flagship feature in 22.05. Second, we finished our device-driver update to Linux 5.14 on PC platforms. This includes Intel graphics support up to Gen12 as well as Intel Wi-Fi for 802.11ax. Also, Genode attains the principle ability for voice calls on the PinePhone and, last but not least, comes with a revised tracing framework incl. Sculpt OS support.... read more

The majority of the development work during the current release cycle was focused on topics beyond the visible surface, ranging from the reorganization of the code base for streamlining the targeting of new hardware, over the tightening of foundational framework APIs, to the raising of the default warning level used when building genuine Genode components. Over the course of this infrastructural work, almost no component was left unturned.... read more

Genode 21.11 is packed with device-driver and platform related improvements. First, our support for the Allwinner A64 powered Pinepone now enables first interactive scenarios due to the ported framebuffer and touchscreen drivers. Also, the i.MX 8 platform now benefits from a new USB host controller driver and the initial port of the Vivante GPU driver. Hardware-accelerated graphics with Intel Gen9+ GPUs was also enabled by improving our custom GPU multiplexer and is now a regular feature of the Genode-based Sculpt OS that can be taken for a spin on commodity PC hardware. Last but not least, we polished our Xilinx Zynq support with the addition of the USRP E310 software-defined-radio device and added VirtIO input and framebuffer drivers.... read more

Today, we released Sculpt OS 21.10, which introduces GPU-accelerated graphics on Intel, media playback in the web browser, VirtualBox 6, and USB webcam support.

https://genode.org/download/sculpt

The current release revolves around a broad range of low-level topics with device drivers in the spotlight. It attacks the costs of porting drivers from the Linux kernel and takes a leap forward with respect to GPU support. This line of work brings framebuffer drivers for i.MX 8 and PinePhone, i.MX 8 SD-card driver, and Pine-A64-LTS networking driver. Genode 21.08 revives our GPU support with the architectural integration of low-complexity GPU multiplexing and an update to Mesa 21.... read more

As always the fresh release comes with many changes, of which the Webcam support and the File Vault are the most notable highlights.

The new webcam feature enables the use of Genode-based systems like Sculpt OS in currently prevailing settings of remote and home-office work. Our native USB video class driver based on libuvc was first connected to VirtualBox to enable online conferencing in a setting familiar to users with well-known tools and operating systems. Two additional but not less important ingredients are our custom webcam model plugged into the ported Qemu XHCI model for VirtualBox and the considerably improved support for isochronous USB transfers. The latter permits using a standard USB headset in a plug-and-play fashion directly from the guest OS.... read more

The current release comes as a conglomerate of new features, additional ARM SoC support for Pine-A64-LTS SBC, and optimizations. Most prominently, network drivers for Ethernet and WiFi beside graphics and input drivers are now pluggable at runtime, which enables restart and update of these drivers without directly affecting network-application stacks. Besides increased system robustness via online monitoring and transparent restarting, this extends the options for power management by shutting down unused devices dynamically. Speaking of networking, Genode now includes mobile-communication infrastructure for USB LTE modems conforming to the MBIM interface. Also, the release features a first experimental version of VirtualBox 6.1, which is going to supersede our aging port of version 5.... read more

We just released Genode 20.11 with the following highlights: Sculpt OS for 64-bit ARM hardware, dynamic CPU-load balancing, multicore virtualization on ARM, improved audio on PC hardware, and VirtIO networking support. Find all the details in the release documentation.

The new version of Sculpt OS incorporates Genode 20.08 with all its improvements: redesigned GUI stack for improved interactive responsiveness and better pixel output quality, final replacement of the Noux runtime by native LibC components, and massive under-the-hood changes. Also, the release refines the user experience and brings the Chromium-based Falkon web browser to Sculpt.... read more

The most preeminent feature of the current release is the port of the Falkon browser an incarnation of the Chromium web engine to Genode. In preparation, much effort went into the stabilization of the C runtime to cover obscure corner cases of POSIX, sensible integration of third-party build systems, solving instruction-cache invalidation issues on ARM, and the elimination of other obstacles. Less visible but a major improvement for stability and versatility of the user interface is the profound redesign of the low-level GUI stack that removes drivers for graphics and input from the trusted computing base. The architectural change lays the groundwork for swapping out drivers on the fly without reboot. It also paves the ground for features like screen capturing and remote desktop scenarios in a privacy-protecting way.... read more

The principal topic of the Genode 20.05 release is consolidation, which is a polite synonym for hard work hidden from the user and developer under the hood of our widely stabilized API. The strong motivation for this work stems from the confrontation of our software with increasingly complex real world workloads. One highlight along these lines is the generalization of our central component for managing platform I/O resources. This release reflects the first step, a from-the-scratch platform driver for ARM that lays the foundation for the renovation of our x86 component. Also, we unified the virtualization support for ARMv7/ARMv8 and added support for Qemu virt ARM platforms for 32 and 64 bit.... read more

The current release brings a vast amount of improvements motivated by Sculpt OS. Most prominently Sculpt can now be run on 64-bit ARM i.MX 8 hardware including extensive peripheral support for wired networking, USB, SD card, and graphics via HDMI connector. Additionally, our virtual-machine monitor supports the hosting of Linux guest systems, which brings Sculpt OS on ARM on par with x86. Further, the user-visible side of Sculpt becomes more and more approachable and logical for end users. This release comes with a profound redesign of the administrative user interface. An updated downloadable system image will follow soon.... read more

With Genode 19.11 we continue building the bridge between the worlds. We further enhanced our POSIX compatibility with regard to exec, fork, and signals as well as introduced a first version of the application component SDK named Goa. Also, the release bring vast improvements in the ARM64 area with multi-core support, a virtual-machine monitor, and self-hosting ability.

As a bonus this release brings the preliminary result of our year-long effort to support block-device encryption implemented in SPARK.... read more

This release follows the motto "bridging worlds" and, therefore, addresses many practical concerns when using Genode/Sculpt OS in real-world applications. The topics addressed range from keyboard layouts, over system-time management, to remote system administration. It also continues our commitment to the 64-bit ARM i.MX8 SoC, comes with Qt5 version 5.13, and improves POSIX compatibility.

For all details please refer to the release documentation at https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/19.08