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This is part of why I've been so excited about Genode/Sculpt https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-24-10 https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sc

This is part of why I've been so excited about Genode/Sculpt https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-24-10 https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-24-10 It's tiny, clearly built with love for the user, doesn't do a heck of a lot, and has some interesting ideas that are just fun to mess around in. And unlike some of the similar retrocomputing OS's (which are also lovely but grounded in old fashioned design), genode feels like a glimpse into the good future.

abrookewood 2y ago
That looks like the most radical/unusual operating system thing I have seen in recent memory. Not sure how practical it is, but kudos for trying something so different.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  It's so cool, I could talk about it forever. It's practical enough for the devs to use it as a daily driver (though with linux in VirtualBox or Seoul for some things like running their builds) and theres a few businesses built on it. But nowhere near as practical as Linux at the moment of course
  - tombert 2y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know anyone had tried to make seL4 on a desktop. I think it'd be very cool to have a fully verified kernel...
portercable 2y ago
I had not heard of Genode/Sculpt, but it looks interesting. These days, I feel like if I boot a new operating system, I have no idea what all it's doing and whether or not things are secure--I'm basically relying on the operating system to have good defaults. And then it's so easy to screw something up! I like the idea of Qubes and it looks like Genode might be an even better idea...
- spencerflem 2y ago
  It's a very similar philosophy to Qubes - one of their open challenges is to port the qubes infrastructure over since qubes is (in theory at least) hypervisor independent. https://genode.org/about/challenges https://genode.org/about/challenges Which would be nice since NOVA hypervisor is dramatically less code then Xen and Nitpicker/Dialog for the management console is dramatically less code than Fedora. I've looked into it briefly but it seems like too much work for me right now. The True Genode Way of course is that everything worth having would eventually be ported as a native genode component instead of a qubes style VM. They've put a lot of effort into making that as easy as they can with Goa (a nix-inspired package management and build tool) and adding to their C standard library and ports of popular 3rd party libs like SDL
- spencerflem 2y ago
  Also - their defaults are pretty hilarious. They dont assume you want a RAM-Only filesystem. By default it starts out completely immutable with nothing being able to save anything anywhere. If you want to save anything to a hard drive you have to enable that driver because they don't assume that you'd need one. Copy and paste is an optional extra to install It's wild :p
latentcall 2y ago
Wow, this looks really cool. How does it handle Atheros WiFi cards? I have a ThinkPad X200 I’d love to throw this on for fun. Thanks for sharing!!
- spencerflem 2y ago
  Not sure! They have a system set up for porting drivers from Linux into userspace components so it bats above its size. From their description: "It is tested best on laptops of the Lenovo X and T series (X220, X250, X260, T430, T460, T470, T490)", 200 isn't on the list but you'd probably have about as good a time as you can

abrookewood 2y ago

That looks like the most radical/unusual operating system thing I have seen in recent memory. Not sure how practical it is, but kudos for trying something so different.

spencerflem 2y ago
It's so cool, I could talk about it forever. It's practical enough for the devs to use it as a daily driver (though with linux in VirtualBox or Seoul for some things like running their builds) and theres a few businesses built on it. But nowhere near as practical as Linux at the moment of course
- tombert 2y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know anyone had tried to make seL4 on a desktop. I think it'd be very cool to have a fully verified kernel...

portercable 2y ago

I had not heard of Genode/Sculpt, but it looks interesting. These days, I feel like if I boot a new operating system, I have no idea what all it's doing and whether or not things are secure--I'm basically relying on the operating system to have good defaults. And then it's so easy to screw something up! I like the idea of Qubes and it looks like Genode might be an even better idea...

spencerflem 2y ago
It's a very similar philosophy to Qubes - one of their open challenges is to port the qubes infrastructure over since qubes is (in theory at least) hypervisor independent. https://genode.org/about/challenges https://genode.org/about/challenges Which would be nice since NOVA hypervisor is dramatically less code then Xen and Nitpicker/Dialog for the management console is dramatically less code than Fedora. I've looked into it briefly but it seems like too much work for me right now. The True Genode Way of course is that everything worth having would eventually be ported as a native genode component instead of a qubes style VM. They've put a lot of effort into making that as easy as they can with Goa (a nix-inspired package management and build tool) and adding to their C standard library and ports of popular 3rd party libs like SDL
spencerflem 2y ago
Also - their defaults are pretty hilarious. They dont assume you want a RAM-Only filesystem. By default it starts out completely immutable with nothing being able to save anything anywhere. If you want to save anything to a hard drive you have to enable that driver because they don't assume that you'd need one. Copy and paste is an optional extra to install It's wild :p

latentcall 2y ago

Wow, this looks really cool. How does it handle Atheros WiFi cards? I have a ThinkPad X200 I’d love to throw this on for fun. Thanks for sharing!!

spencerflem 2y ago
Not sure! They have a system set up for porting drivers from Linux into userspace components so it bats above its size. From their description: "It is tested best on laptops of the Lenovo X and T series (X220, X250, X260, T430, T460, T470, T490)", 200 isn't on the list but you'd probably have about as good a time as you can