Roadmap 2012

[Norman Feske]

Hello,

as the end of the year is approaching, it's time to make up our minds
about the focus of the project in 2012.

There are numerous directions we may head to, for example, we could
advance our ARM support to move towards the mobile space (tablets
and smart phones), or put emphasis on multi-processor support and
NUMA, new kernel platforms could be explored, or we could bring
forward our ambitions to combine Genode with reconfigurable
hardware.

However, for me personally, the biggest leap would be to start using
Genode as everyday platform for my personal computing needs. I am
convinced that the framework has reached the maturity and the
essential functionality to make this vision come true in 2012. Using
our platform for productive work would provide us with the incentive
to address real-world problems that matter for actual users - simply
because we would be demanding users. Furthermore, there is no better
way to show the conviction that we have in our technology than to
use it ourself.

Therefore, I propose "Eating our own dog food" as the grand theme of
our project for the next year.

To schedule our road map, we should first become aware of our actual
computing needs and then sensibly prioritize those requirements.
I'll start with a brief list of software functionalities that I need.

Fundamental:

* VIM
* Shell (e.g., bash)
* Tool chain (coreutils, gcc, binutils, make, findutils, tar, Tcl,
  expect)
* Persistent file system
* Block-device encryption
* SSH client
* Git client
* GNUPG
* Web browser (also used for email, don't need multi-media stuff)
* PDF viewer
* A way to run a just-compiled Genode sub system
* Interactive python shell (to be used as a calculator)
* Screen lock
* A fall-back virtual machine running Linux for carrying out sporadic
  work with images (Gimp, Povray, ImageMagick, etc.) and LaTeX, and
  for testing the Linux version of Genode

Of course, there are further things I desire that are not
fundamentally important but would make the experience much more
enjoyable.

Add-ons:

* Tiled window manager (similar to the wonderful ion3)
* Intel wireless driver
* Media player (at least for playing music)
* Thinkpad ACPI support, fan daemon
* Qemu
* Tuxpaint

This list is surprisingly short. With Noux already having reached
the state where we can execute VIM natively, supporting the other
command-line tools will, for the most part, be a matter of enhancing
Noux (i.e., adding support for the fork syscall).

In addition, I have the immediate goal to release a new live CD by
February 2012. Ideally, the demo scenarios featured on the new live
CD should give a glimpse on how Genode will be used a general-
purpose OS.

Do you agree with the proposal of the overall theme for 2012?
Which preconditions would you consider as fundamental to make Genode
usable for carrying out productive work? Which other direction
would you like to see Genode heading to?

Cheers
Norman

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
Genode Labs

http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth