Guest post by 148760
Sculpt is an open-source general-purpose OS based on the Genode framework. It combines a microkernel architecture, capability-based security, sandboxed device drivers, and hardware-virtualized guests in a novel operating system for commodity x86-64 hardware.
The third version of Sculpt OS is now available under codename Sculpt VC. It is based on Genode OS framework release 18.08. “Sculpt with Visual Composition” takes a step forward to turn Sculpt into a useable system for a wider audience. It features a graphical user interface for performing fundamental tasks like connecting to a wireless network, or installing and running software from packages. However, the full power of
the system is still accessible only via a textual interface. A detailed description of the usage and structure of Sculpt VC can be found in its documentation.
Sculpt VC is available in form of an USB stick image thats boots on bare metal x86 hardware. The image has a size of 24 MiB only. Alternatively, a virtual appliance for VirtualBox is provided.
This is an exciting release, and a big step on Genode’s road to usability as an everyday OS!
The progress of this project continues to be surprisingly fast. Just a few months ago, they released the first pre-built images in several years, which included a GUI front-end for several common management actions.
This release adds a really interesting and innovative new feature – the “Live Runtime View”, which is an interactive graphical diagram of the software components running on the system, showing some detailed information about each one and the relationships between them, and allowing the user to add and remove components on the fly.
There is also more software available for it than you might expect, since they have a POSIX compatibility layer and a Qt5 port (among others). The sample components include a couple of games, a Bash shell (called Noux), VirtualBox, a native Qt5 text editor and web browser (Arora), and two versions of virtualized Firefox (among other things).
Even if you don’t have time to read about the technical aspects of the Genode system, I highly recommend that you download either the USB stick image or VirtualBox appliance, and read (and follow along) through the “Getting a first impression” section, which is a quick tour of the GUI features.
I am always surprised that Genode doesn’t get more buzz, considering how robust the code is, and how professionally the project is run. But with the package management system in place on top of the increasingly mature Genode base, I think the conditions are ripe for a hobbyist ecosystem to pop up.
Thank you for the feedback and the summary from your perspective.
You obviously have quite profound insights into the project. In my opinion, your comment would have made a nice news item about the release. 😉
Buzz is all about communication. There are not many people who are involved in the project and also well versed in social media, spreading the word.
I wonder if targetting x86-64 is wise, when that architecture might be showing first signs of beeing on the way out, with possibly ARM (or perhaps RISC-V?) taking over; already large parts of computing is done on ARM devices, phones, for which Genode framework could be suitable as base …are there any plans to have Genode/Sculpt running on other CPU architectures?
There are ARM ports, but IIRC those don’t have GUI support yet, and RISC-V is still very new as an architecture.
You have to admit, its a good bet to target the most widely available platform. Arm is great but there isn’t a widely distributed platform that allows arbitrary operating systems to be installed with minimal hassle.
Well, targetting Raspberry Pi family of devices seems to be also a decent bet…
Sure, there’s a lot of ARM devices out there and x86 sales have plateaued but that doesn’t suddenly make ARM easy to target with every SoC being its own unique challenge before you even get to device differences.
That’s if you even have a suitable (probably undocumented) binary driver blob to start with.
That Intel is having capacity issues, because they can’t meet demand, and AMD is surging seem to indicate otherwise.
We’re both arguing that x86 is in a strong position yet I feel compelled to say I was actually being kind to the sales numbers which are well down from their peak around 2011-2013 but the general trend is small changes to a matured market… Or in shorthand, sales have plateaued.
Source:
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42882717
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44118818
Edited 2018-09-27 17:04 UTC
I think it’s highly optimistic at the moment to say that amd64 has a bleak future and that RISC-V is a better bet.
But OS landscape for amd64 is basically settled – IMHO an aspiring OS should focus on uncharted territory to have a chance of wide adoption.