Genode 20.05 takes our road map’s focus on the consolidation and optimization of the framework and its API to heart. It contains countless of under-the-hood improvements, mostly on the account of vastly intensified automated testing, the confrontation of Genode with increasingly complex software stacks, and stressful real-world work loads. You will find this theme throughout the release notes below. The result of this overhaul is captured in the updated version of the Genode Foundations book (Section New revision of the Genode Foundations book).
I wish every project had release notes as detailed as Genode’s always are. Excellent work.
I highly recommend that everyone who is interested in alternative OS security models (e.g., Alfman, etc.) take a look at Genode. And right after the annual refresh of the “Genode Foundations” e-book is always a good time.
The project is at an interesting time in its history. Having gone through the “research OS” phase with its basic thesis proven (and adjusted as necessary), the basic framework is now pretty mature and stable, and the focus is now on things like improving the UI/UX, broadening / streamlining hardware support, and interesting research topics like provable correctness.
For me, this is probably the most exciting time in a project’s life cycle – the heavy lifting to make it usable is done, but there are many areas where they are exploring new ideas, and it’s still early enough for users to share ideas and have an influence on the design of various components!
As it stands, the system, with a mixture of native and third-party packages, is usable as a daily driver (as the Genode devs use it). The development tooling is very good, as is the documentation (take a look at “Genode Foundations”). And the dev team is very responsive and helpful (to newcomers and experts alike).
I continue to be shocked that it hasn’t got more traction among hobbyists, considering how advanced and solid both the concepts and implementation are. I am deeply frustrated that I don’t have more time to spend on this personally, but all the ingredients are there. Please also check out the “genodians.org” site for a sampling of the broad range of topics being explored.
Pro-Competition,
It’s gotten harder for me to really dig into alternatives like I used to. If I could get it working on ARM devices it might be worthwhile. As much as I like using linux on the embedded side, it’s rather bloated these days. Maybe I’ll try reading the book.
Well, it might not matter if I was only interested as a hobbyist, but I’m not a fan of genode’s licensing. It’s more restrictive than GPL, section 13 in particular…
https://genode.org/about/LICENSE
This clause in and of itself makes it a poor substitute for linux for companies like mine. I’d have to go with commercial licensing, which genode offers of course. but it’s a disincentive.
That is an interesting point. IANAL, but I think you should be able to choose your own license for any packages you develop, which is where most of the action is, as opposed to enhancing the actual Genode framework. To be sure, I would either ask on the mailing list, or even reach out to Norman directly.
In any case, I think that things like the security model and hierarchical resource ownership (etc.) make it well worth looking into. The live component graph in “Leitzentrale” (i.e. control panel) gives a taste, but there is a lot of untapped potential waiting to be explored!
And the VirtualBox appliance makes it easy to take it for a spin. 🙂
I forgot to mention in the other reply that they have put a lot of work into ARM (including virtualization); e.g., the new platform driver for ARM in this release. I haven’t tried it on ARM yet myself, but there are quite a few articles about it on genodians.org.
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