Next Release estimates?

[Norman Feske]

Hi Lonnie,

> My questions stem from the way that VirtualBox currently works on other
> hosts in that you can have it look at the physical CDROM or an ISO on
> the hard drive to boot from. Actually, I have been researching VB a bit
> as well and it seems that there is also a way to make VB boot physical
> partitions into a VM. This would be very good to have in the
> NOVA-Genode-VirtualBox design as well.

design-wise, there is no show stopper to do that with our version as
well. But some implementation bits are still missing. I am pretty sure
that we will support this feature as it is very useful indeed.

> As you know, one of my current goals is to basically make a full Type-1
> hypervisor from the NOVA-Genode-VirtualBox solution which is
> functionally similar to the older NOVA v0.3 DEMO but instead have
> VirtualBox for the VMM's and in a Genode Nitpicker GUI but still retain
> the VERY NICE keyboard navigation from that demo to switch between VM's,
> I could envision a very nice Type-1 hypervisor out of this combination
> and could thrust Genode onto the hypervisor stage to compete with XEN,
> Hyper-V, and VMware in this arena.
> 
> Also currently it seems that Genode does not have a filemanager nor
> desktop manager  as well and I have also been looking at possibly trying
> to port an existing open source linux or windows desktop manager over to
> Genode as that would also greatly increase the popularity as well when
> people can explore the OS a bit more as it evolves to a general OS.

I agree. There is even some work in progress on my side. However,
instead of porting an existing DE, I am investigating some new ideas. If
you like, you may have a look at my line of work on the following branch.

  https://github.com/nfeske/genode/commits/ui

Apart from this undertaking, it would be worthwhile to look into the
possibility of porting an existing desktop environment. As we have Qt5
readily available, there exists at least a starting point.

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