I'm happy to announce the release of Genode version 21.08.
https://genode.org/news/genode-os-framework-release-21.08
The most prominent topics of the new version are GPU support and a fresh approach for porting device-driver code from the Linux kernel to Genode.
Up to now, the use of hardware-accelerated graphics has remained a mere experimentation ground for Genode. As such, GPUs remain unused by Sculpt OS. The current release aims to change that, setting the goal of making GPUs a commodity feature of Genode-based systems. This line of work comprises a largely improved version of our custom GPU multiplexer for Intel GPUs, a novel way of decoupling the display driver from the GPU driver, and a revamped Mesa library stack.
The second major topic is a new device-driver environment (DDE) for executing unmodified Linux driver code as Genode components. With the re-imagined DDE introduced by Genode 21.08, the porting of such drivers takes only a fraction of time compared to our previous porting efforts.
A quick summary of the current release:
- Linux-device-driver environment re-imagined - New device drivers - i.MX8mq framebuffer driver - i.MX8mq SD-card driver - Pinephone framebuffer - Pine-A64-LTS networking driver - RAM framebuffer driver for Qemu - Revived GPU support - Mesa 21.0.0 - Architectural integration of GPU multiplexing - Refined user-level network routing - Updated and improved VirtualBox - Media playback and SSL validation for Qt5 and QtWebEngine - Modular integration of LTE modem stack in Sculpt OS - Tool-chain support for RISC-V
The detailed release documentation is available here:
https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.08
Have fun with exploring the new version!
Norman