Hi! Sorry for topposting! Thanks for everything made in 2020 and exiting (as always ) thoughts about 2021.
I decided to send out my own "roadmap" instead of polluting this thread. The best thing with Genode imho is that it doesn't force me of what I want to run. If I need base-hw with a couple of drivers it doesn't include a big mass of software or unrelated drivers. It is also easy to port to new hardware thanks to the abstraction being quite easy to grasp. I think your roadmap is great. PinePhone is exciting but would need a big rethink on UI, Michael On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 at 05:46, Colin Parker <cvpar...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Everybody, > As a hobbyist who's been following Genode for about a year now (I was > running Sculpt on my home computer for a few months), I thought I would offer > a few thoughts. Since I mostly do stuff for fun and at a slow pace, I don't > expect to be influential in any serious way, but perhaps the perspective of > hobby users is valuable nonetheless? Overall I'm very impressed with > Genode/Sculpt - the philosophy and approach is pretty cool, and I have some > successes with it. For example, I was able to port the Qt version of the > "2048" game, and recently I have been trying to port the HelenOS driver for > AR9271 usb wifi dongle - it is work in progress and non-functional currently. > I also appreciate the level of active development going on - each new update > brings cool stuff, so I think the past year of Genode updates was interesting > to see. > > If there's one wish I have it would be better hardware support and > resiliency. Currently, unless I misunderstand, the hardware support list > mostly reflects the hardware that Genode Labs uses, and there doesn't see to > be much dynamic handling of identifying and loading drivers. Example 1 - > Sculpt will try to load a PS2 driver even on my Apple hardware that doesn't > have any, leading to system crash. Example 2 - Sculpt uses pretty simple > hard-coded logic to select which framebuffer driver to use, when I was > expecting an XML file somewhere to allow more fine-grained control of which > vendor/product IDs to assign to which driver (and also to identify and match > other drivers, I guess). Example 3 - When the FB driver crashes, the rest of > the system is resilient and continues to run. But, of course this is nearly > useless because there is no way to reset the driver. Given my understanding > of the component-based architecture, it seems like these things shouldn't be > insurmountable issues. It should be possible to identify a failed component, > kill it, and replace with a new instance, I think? It would be fun, in > non-embedded applications, to be able to compile an experimental driver > within a VM, push the result back to the running system, test it, tweak and > recompile, etc. With that kind of workflow, maybe we could hope for more > experimental/community drivers, at least on PC hardware? > > Anyhow, those are my thoughts, thanks for making Genode! > > Regards, > Colin > > On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 9:00 AM Norman Feske <norman.fe...@genode-labs.com> > wrote: >> >> Dear Genode community, >> >> the end of the strange year 2020 comes in sight. So now it is time >> to kick off our annual road-map discussion. I'll keep up with our >> tradition of reviewing the past 12 months from my personal >> perspective, dropping my ideas for the upcoming year, and inviting >> you to share your ideas and plans. >> >> >> Review of 2020 >> -------------- >> >> The overarching theme of our road map for 2020 was "Dwarfing the >> barrier of entry", which expressed the ambition to reach a wider >> audience. On that account, we identified four promising directions: >> First, making Sculpt OS palatable for a wider circle. Second, >> fostering the public perception of the high quality of Genode to >> reinforce the confidence of people who are sceptical towards novel >> operating-system technology. Third, lowering the barrier of entry by >> providing frictionless tooling. And fourth, publicly presenting use >> cases that prove the fitness and flexibility of Genode. >> >> These directions certainly did a good job of motivating the working >> topics of this year's four releases [1,2,3,4]. >> >> [1] https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/20.02 >> [2] https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/20.05 >> [3] https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/20.08 >> [4] https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/20.11 >> >> The UI improvements of Sculpt OS in version 20.02 largely eliminated >> the need to use the command line, as shown in my live demo [5]. >> But the work on the user-visible side of Sculpt has admittedly dried >> up a bit since spring time. Software quality has been a continuous >> topic. Personally, I dedicated a lot of energy to the improvement >> and consolidation of our POSIX support (Noux vs. libc) and the >> related infrastructure like the VFS server. >> >> [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmgWgzeKAjU >> >> That said, despite the many technical advances, the stated soft goal >> of reaching a broader audience remains fairly distant. Genode has >> not seen a significantly wider adoption by the open-source community >> at large compared to one year ago. >> >> On the other hand, regarding our stated commitment to 64-bit ARM >> hardware, in particular supporting the NXP i.MX8 SoC, there is a >> strong sense of accomplishment, which makes me proud. The depth and >> breadth of this line of work has been fantastic. I'm speaking of >> 64-bit multi-core virtualization, HDMI, touch input, OLED, >> networking, LTE, USB, clock and power management, VirtIO, up to >> running Sculpt OS on this platform. It is a huge success story on a >> technical account. >> >> Regarding our reach to a broader community, we are super excited >> about the prospect of combining Genode with the MNT-Reform laptop >> that is based on the i.MX8 SoC. When speaking of i.MX8 one year ago, >> I also had the Librem5 in mind - envisioning Genode on a smart-phone >> form factor. But that hope remained abstract as we did not succeed >> to establish a correspondence with the makers of the Librem5. The >> vision of a Genode-based smart phone, however, has become stronger >> than ever (see below). >> >> While reading the paragraphs above, you may sense my ambiguous >> feelings about the past year's road map. I think we missed the >> stated goal. I also think that we excelled at technological >> progress. For us developers, the road map serves primarily as >> orientation for our technical work. But since the past year's goal >> of increasing adoption hasn't been a technical one, no level of >> technical excellence will magically bring us there. So the goal was >> a bit delusionally to begin with. Let us lift this pressure for the >> next year and concentrate on the technical level. >> >> >> My personal ambitions for 2021 >> ------------------------------ >> >> * By the end of the year, I want to use a Genode-based mobile phone, >> replacing my current Nokia 3720. I'll focus on the _Pinephone_. >> In fact, I have already taken the first baby steps and will >> continue to thoroughly document this line of work at >> https://genodians.org. >> >> * I see plenty of opportunities for optimization throughout Genode >> and would like to make _optimization_ the motto of the year. >> The following ideas are spontaneously crossing my mind: >> >> - Profiling and tuning of Unix-like workloads, in particular >> by looking at file-system access patterns. >> - Fostering the batching of async I/O, e.g., increasing the >> chance for the batching of network packets. >> - Let our ARM tool chain use the hard-float calling convention. >> - Replace the allocator of our C runtime by jemalloc. >> - Reducing the overhead of our POSIX TLS mechanism. >> - Taking XML parsing off the critical path for the dynamic >> reconfiguration of init. >> - Removing indirections, in particular the old libc plugin interface. >> - Reducing the inflation of binaries by C++ templates. >> - Improving compilation times by reducing header interdependencies. >> - Merging core's CPU and PD service into one. >> >> * I'm convinced that we have to dramatically reduce the engineering >> effort needed to port device drivers from the Linux kernel to >> Genode. Backed by our practical DDE-Linux experience, a few ideas >> have formed in the back of my head. They want out. So I see my >> work with the Pinephone as a welcome opportunity for experimenting >> in this direction. >> >> >> What's your perspective? >> ------------------------ >> >> For drafting the road map of next year, I'm eagerly interested in >> the perspective of my fellow developers and of course users of >> Genode. >> >> How do you perceive the outcome of the year? >> >> What areas would you wish to concentrate on? >> >> Where do you see untapped potential of Genode? >> >> How do you envision Genode in December 2021? >> >> >> I would very much appreciate your input for forming a rough picture >> of next year. Of course, not all ideas will make it to the road map. >> Economic constraints and the willingness of pro-active participation >> play a major role. Regarding the timeline, I plan to announce the >> official road map for 2021 in mid of January. >> >> Cheers >> Norman >> >> -- >> Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske >> Genode Labs >> >> https://www.genode-labs.com · https://genode.org >> >> Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden >> Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Genode users mailing list >> users@lists.genode.org >> https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users > > _______________________________________________ > Genode users mailing list > users@lists.genode.org > https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users _______________________________________________ Genode users mailing list users@lists.genode.org https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users
