Genode OS walk-through on YouTube Dec 22, 2010

Check out our new screencast presenting the Genode Live CD 10.11.

For those of you who like to get a glimpse of our recently released Live CD but hesitate to download and boot the ISO image, we have prepared the following screencast with a guided walk-through. Enjoy!

Visit the YouTube page...

Download the real thing...

Genode OS Framework release 10.11 Nov 30, 2010

With version 10.11, Genode has become able to run network drivers of the gPXE project, employ user-level on-demand paging, and use advanced graphics with the nitpicker GUI server.

With the recently published Live CD, the Genode project has reached a new stage by integrating advanced device drivers, complex protocol stacks, and real-world applications into one dynamic setup. The new Genode release 10.11 bears fruit of the intensive effort that went into this important milestone. There are improvements and functional additions all over the code base. To highlight a few, we enhanced the Nitpicker GUI server to support alpha blending, added an execution environment for running network drivers of the gPXE project, completed the implementation of Genode's concept for user-level page-fault handling, and further advanced the integration of the paravirtualized Linux kernel with Genode's native interfaces for networking, block-device access, graphics, and audio.

Furthermore, the release comes with a number of new components such as a virtual network bridge and a http-based block server, which can be combined with the existing components to open up new use cases of the framework.

Please enjoy the full description of all the improvements that come with version 10.11.

Genode Live Demonstration 2010-11 Nov 16, 2010

The new Genode Live CD showcases the vast functional progress during the past year in a selection of five demos ranging from native Qt4/Webkit support to hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.

Since the release of the previous Genode Live CD in September 2009, we focused our development work on supporting native Qt4/Webkit applications, user-level Linux, sound support, Mesa/Gallium3D, block drivers, and a networking stack. Furthermore, we paid special attention to tightly integrate existing software with native Genode features. Two prominent examples are the seamless integration of a virtualized Linux desktop and the support for running complete Genode subsystems as plugin in the Arora web browser. In response to several requests to complement our regular source-code releases with a new bootable live CD, we have now published a new version.

You can now test drive the current version of Genode on your PC (or virtual machine) to get an idea about where the development of the framework is heading.

Download the new live CD featuring five setups showcasing our efforts of the past year.

Genode OS Framework release 10.08 Aug 11, 2010

With Gallium3D, MadWifi, and a new block-driver infrastructure, the release 10.08 takes Genode's device-driver support to the next level.

Wireless networking and hardware-accelerated graphics are commonly regarded as two of the most sophisticated domains when it comes to device-driver support in operating systems. We are proud to have taken the challenge to support these device classes in the Genode OS Framework. The just released version 10.08 comes with support for the Gallium3D software stack alongside the Intel graphics execution manager, which enables Genode applications to perform hardware-accelerated 3D graphics on Intel GMA platforms. Our port of the MadWifi wireless stack pushes the limits of what can be done with our Linux device-driver environment. Furthermore, we extended our device-driver-related activities to block devices, resulting in a new block-device interface and an ATAPI driver accompanied with an ISO 9660 file system. Apart from device drivers, there are numerous other improvements such as the upgrade to Qt4.6.3 and support for dynamic linking on platforms using ARM EABI.

Please find more in-depth information in the detailed release notes of version 10.08....

Genode OS Framework release 10.05 May 27, 2010

The new version 10.05 adds support for mandatory access-control policies, introduces audio playback, and improves the integration of the paravirtualized OKLinux kernel with the framework.

With the current release, we focused on functionality to broaden the application area of the framework. The infrastructure of the framework has advanced to a point that allows running a steadily growing number of typical general-purpose applications directly on Genode. This is best illustrated by the fully functional Arora web browser running as a native Genode process. Still, there are a large number of usage scenarios that rely on Linux applications. For this reason, we further improved the integration of the paravirtualized OKLinux kernel with Genode. The new version adds support for seamlessly integrating the X Window System running on OKLinux with the native nitpicker GUI. For Genode developers, there is a new build system, which significantly improves the build performance on multi-processor systems.

Read on about these and many more improvements detailed in the release notes of version 10.05...

Adaptation to Codezero kernel v0.3 Apr 06, 2010

The just released version 0.3 of the Codezero kernel adds support for the latest ARMv7 CPUs. The Genode OS Framework is now ready to be used with this new kernel version.

Since version 10.02, the Genode OS Framework officially supports the version 0.2 of the Codezero microkernel developed by B-Labs. The road map of this kernel promised support for the latest ARM CPU cores. With the just released version 0.3, which added support for ARMv7 CPU cores, the project lives up to this promise. In addition to the extended CPU support, the new release adds important functionality regarding device I/O, which prompted us to adapt Genode to the new version. The adaptation to Codezero version 0.3 is now available at our Subversion repository. To facilitate the use of Genode with Codezero, we created a dedicated Wiki page, which provides up-to-date documentation about building and using Genode on this kernel.

Thanks to the Codezero developers for being extremely responsive to our questions and feature requests!

Learn more about using Genode with Codezero...

Genode OS Framework release 10.02 Feb 24, 2010

Among a variety of platform-related improvements, the release 10.02 adds support for the NOVA and Codezero kernels and introduces a new concept for managing real-time priorities.

Succeeding the previous feature-rich release, the Genode project took the chance to focus on extending the base-platform support of the framework. We are happy to report that we were able to complement the already broad range of supported kernels by two new modern microkernels namely NOVA and Codezero, both first released in 2009. Thereby, Genode provides a unified user-level infrastructure that runs directly on those kernels as well as on Linux (32 bit and 64 bit), OKL4v2 (x86 and ARMv4), L4/Fiasco, and L4ka::Pistachio. For developers creating microkernel-based applications, the framework hides the intricacies of the respective kernel. But it also strives to make the unique capabilities of each base platform accessible to the user. For example, with the new release, we made the real-time scheduling of OKL4 and L4ka::Pistachio available to Genode applications.

Read on the full story about our experiences with the new kernels and the many improvements of the release 10.02...

Download the latest release...

Road map 2010 Jan 04, 2010

We have updated our road map with the planning of the year 2010.

With the start of the new year, its time to pause for a moment, looking back the progress we made during 2009, and planning the next steps. The overall theme of 2009 was the creation of fundamental base functionality to make the framework usable for practical applications. We are proud when revisiting the long list of achievements introduced with the four releases of the past year: Support for the OKL4 and l4ka::Pistachio kernels, Linux device-driver environment, networking, USB input and storage, dynamic linking, Qt4 including Webkit, and support for a paravirtualized Linux kernel. With this strong foundation in place, its time to raise the bar again.

Please read on about our updated road map for 2010...