Like Norman, I would like the year 2015 to be “the year of the Genode Desktop” [sic] and focus more closely on refining certain components and completing their functionality, i.e. using multiple USB storage devices at the same time, being able to resize a terminal window, having audio support on newer HDA chipsets to better fit my personal needs and of course the integration of existing components. This way it eventually also gets easier to provide a new live-cd ;-)
Within the meaning of using Genode it might be reasonable to formulate a few specific needs and how to (possibly) address them:
* A reasonably comfortable way to configure and start new subsystems dynamically at run time (as a first step by extending cli_monitor and combing it with noux to create new configurations)
* More natural interaction with files (presenting them in a graphical way by attaching a particular “view” depending on its type)
* Usable E-Mail client appliance (for starters by using the usual mutt+msmtp+isync+gpg setup in isolated noux instances)
* Access to remote resources via network (NFS/SMB in rump_fs could be enabled, a simple protocol like 9p2000 could be implemented)
* Being able to browse the “modern” web on Genode (though we have Arora, porting an actively maintained browser like Qupzilla is worthwhile, imho — sadly lynx does not count anymore in this day and age) (*)
Cheers Josef
(*) On that account, there is several Qt5 based applications like mumble, phototonic, transmission, vlc and so on, which should be fairly easy to port to Genode and might serve as a stop-gap solution for particular tasks.