As always the new release comes with many changes, of which the Webcam support and the File Vault are the most notable highlights.
The new webcam feature enables the use of Genode-based systems like Sculpt OS in currently prevailing settings of remote and home-office work. The ingredients (described in more detail in the release notes) are the native USB video class driver based on libuvc, which connects to its clients via a dedicated Nitpicker instance as capture bridge, our custom webcam model plugged into the ported Qemu XHCI model for VirtualBox, and the considerably improved support for isochronous USB transfers. The latter permits using a standard USB headset in a plug-and-play fashion directly from the guest OS. Now, online conferencing ready-to-use in a setting familiar to users with well-known tools and guest operating systems.
With the new File Vault Genode 21.05 brings a east-to-deploy component for native encrypted data storage. The vault is based on the consistent block encrypter (CBE) in combination with ext2 for file-based access. It comes with a graphical front end that aims at making the creation, use, and maintenance as intuitive and secure as possible.
Last but not least, the Genode Foundations book got its annual update and comes now with a companion - Genode Platforms. The new book complements Foundations with low-level hardware-related topics and is primarily intended for integrators and developers of device drivers.
The topics of the current release are:
- Webcam support - Tool chain updated to GCC 10.3 and Binutils 2.36 - New documentation "Genode Platforms" - File vault based on the CBE encrypter - Genode/Linux on 64-bit ARM - I2C and reset-domain support for i.MX8 - Network driver on RISC-V - Evolving support for the Pine-A64-LTS board - New tools for porting Linux drivers
The complete release documentation can be found at the usual place
https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.05
Happy hacking