Genode OS Framework release 20.08 Aug 28, 2020

With Genode 20.08, the low-level GUI stack underwent a profound redesign, the Chromium web engine comes to life, the i.MX8 support covers clock and power management, and the CBE block encrypter becomes highly modular.

The most stunning feature of Genode 20.08 is most certainly the new ability to host the Chromium web engine as native component in the form of the Falkon web browser. This long-time project involved overcoming countless road blocks along the way to the great benefit of Genode's users at large: building bridges between 3rd-party build systems and Genode, covering seemingly obscure corner cases of POSIX, solving instruction-cache invalidation issues on ARM - just to name a few.

Under the hood, we took the release cycle as opportunity to tackle a major surgery of the low-level GUI stack that we planned for more than two years. The architectural change lays the groundwork for swapping out graphics and input drivers on the fly without reboot. It also paves the ground for features like screen capturing and remote desktop scenarios in a privacy-protecting way.

On our mission of bringing the driver support for the 64-bit ARM-based i.MX8 SoC on par with our driver coverage on Intel PCs, the release introduces a platform driver specifically for this SoC that covers clock and power management. One step closer to using Sculpt OS on the MNT Reform laptop.

Furthermore, Genode's custom block encrypter called CBE received continuous development. In particular, the cryptographic algorithm and trust anchor have become pluggable modules. This will allow for tailoring the CBE to custom products - like hardware trust anchors - without changing its implementation.

These and many more improvements are covered in detail in the release documentation of version 20.08...