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Roadmap 2015
This commit is contained in:
Norman Feske
Christian Helmuth
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commit
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doc/road_map.txt
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doc/road_map.txt
@ -14,138 +14,95 @@ The road map is not fixed. If there is commercial interest of pushing the
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Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.
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Review of the past year
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#######################
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Review of 2014
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##############
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In 2013, we worked on four construction sites: Framework infrastructure,
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self-hosting, tooling and optimization, and hardware support. When
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reviewing the road map for 2013, it is great to see that we largely
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lived up to our planning.
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Most of the progress in 2014 was motivated by our goal to use
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Genode as general-purpose OS on x86-based platforms. To highlight a
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few achievements, we started to use [http://rumpkernel.org/ - Rump kernels]
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as file-system providers, enabled VirtualBox on NOVA, pulled off the
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engineering feat to run the Intel Wireless stack natively on microkernels, and
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came up with a new GUI architecture. We regard these features as the
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groundwork to make Genode a feasible platform for day-to-day computing.
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The framework infrastructure was enhanced with concepts for managing
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CPUs on multi-processor systems and for dynamically balancing memory
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resources, it received new audio and file-system capabilities, and, with
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the addition of Qt5 and the lxIP stack, we could enable highly
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sophisticated workloads natively on Genode.
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On our endeavour of self-hosting Genode on Genode, we could eliminate
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long-standing show stoppers for several base platforms. We were able to
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improve them to the point where we can routinely execute Genode's tool
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chain across several base platforms such as NOVA and Fiasco.OC as part
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of our nightly automated tests. On the user-facing side, a new
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command-line interface has seen the light of the day.
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Two highlights when it comes to tooling were the new event tracing
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facilities, and profound support for automated testing. Thanks to the
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latter, we expose Genode to over 500 test runs including automated
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performance benchmarks. By executing those tests each night, we have
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become able to resolve regressions before they enter the master branch.
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So the master branch remains always in a good shape.
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As expected for an operating-system project, most of our work was spent
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on hardware support. On x86, we added IOMMU support, and the
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virtualization capabilities on NOVA have seen a major upgrade. On ARM,
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we enabled or vastly enhanced the device drivers for Samsung Exynos 5,
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Freescale i.MX, and Raspberry Pi. We also explored the possibilities of
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combining Genode with ARM TrustZone.
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Only two topics, namely Intel wireless and a new user interface concept
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had been deferred. We decided to postpone the Intel wireless topic to
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address gigabit networking instead. Even though the new user-interface
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concept served as a strong motivation behind many improvements of the
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base system such as dynamic reconfiguration and dynamic resource
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balancing, the work on those fundamentals left little room to bring
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forward the actual UI concept. Now that those pieces are in place, we
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can go full steam ahead.
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The most surprising topic that was not clearly laid out in our last
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year's road map is the advancement of the base-hw platform. Started as a
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mere experiment, it received so much love and attention that it
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unexpectedly became able to host the whole universe of Genode's software
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stack.
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That said, even though we are proud about the progress, we are still not there
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yet. So what keeps us back? The answer is actually not technical. Most
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developments over the past years were concerned with individual features or
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technical challenges. But the integration of sophisticated system scenarios
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was a rare occurrence. For the most part, such integration activities were
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solely triggered by a particular project or by a presentation. In order to
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make Genode fit for regular use, we need to make the composing of advanced
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systems a habit for most of the regular developers.
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2014
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####
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Big picture for 2015
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####################
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In 2014, we will put the emphasis on the base-hw kernel, 3rd-party software,
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storage, and the user-facing side of Genode.
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On the account of this realization, the overall theme of 2015 will be the
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consolidation and cultivation of the existing feature set rather than the
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conquering of new grounds. This implies the following topics:
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The experience with base-hw in 2013 ignited our ambitions to develop this
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kernel not just into a complete base platform for Genode, but also
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to explore new grounds. To fully accommodate Genode, we will complement
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base-hw with multi-processor support, kernel-protected capability-based
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security, and real-time scheduling. Beyond supporting Genode's software
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stack, we will explore the use of ARM's virtualization extensions
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to turn base-hw into a microhypervisor, similar to NOVA but focusing on ARM.
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* Advancing our automated test and integration infrastructure towards
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the continuous integration of real-world system scenarios,
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* Fostering good-quality documentation,
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* Optimization of performance and stability,
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* Improvement of our tooling
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With Genode becoming more and more flexible, the role of 3rd-party software in
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both source-code and binary form grows. Even though Genode offers a pretty
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convenient mechanism to automatically download and integrate 3rd-party source
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codes, the burden to resolve inter-dependencies between such source packages is
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still left to the user of the framework. Many new users stumble over
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the installation of 3rd-party code as it is not obvious to see which packages
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are required for a particular system scenario. To make Genode better
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approachable and more convenient to use, we plan to consolidate the current
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mechanisms into a solid source-code package management solution.
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Furthermore, we have to address outstanding limitations of the most
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commonly used base platforms, namely base-hw and NOVA. I.e., only
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with kernel-protected capabilities, base-hw can be considered as a viable
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base platform for security-critical systems, and only with proper
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kernel-resource management, NOVA can be recommended as a kernel for
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general-purpose computing.
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The improved 3rd-party software support will hopefully allow us to realize
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sophisticated and popular usage scenarios more easily. As security is one of
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Genode's major benefits compared to commodity operating systems, we consider
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supporting TOR, either as server, or client side, or even both. One
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possibility would be to provide a ready-to-use live image containing a TOR
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client and a configured browser, which would enable users to browse
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anonymously.
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Besides the use of ported 3rd-party software on top of Genode, we see clear
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demand for hosting 3rd-party binary software, particularly virtualized OSes.
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The Seoul VMM (on NOVA) and L4Linux (on Fiasco.OC) already allow for the use
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of Linux guest OSes as Genode sub systems. However, both solutions fall short
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in different ways. Whereas L4Linux requires the maintenance of a patched Linux
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kernel, Seoul can execute unpatched Linux kernels but requires a fine-tuned
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kernel configuration. Because we long for a product-quality virtualization
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solution that works just out of the box with most existing guest OSes, we will
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make VirtualBox available on Genode/NOVA.
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The move to employing Genode for day-to-day computing requires reliable,
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secure, and fast storage. Hence, we will build and optimize components that
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operate on file-system and block level. This includes work on device drivers,
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file-system stacks, caching mechanisms, block-level encryption, as well as
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improved per-process virtual file systems.
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Finally, we plan to complement Genode with an entirely capability-based user
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interface, which will present the user with a unique model of how to interact
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with the system. With user interface, we actually refer to three different
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things: System configuration (the user interface a system integrator has
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to deal with), text-based user interface, and a graphical desktop environment.
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We hope to cover those with one single holistic concept.
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Besides the cultivation of the existing feature set, there will still be room
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for new things. We are particularly excited about the prospect of combining
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Genode with the [http://sel4.systems - seL4 kernel] and
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the [http://nixos.org/nix/ - Nix package manager]. Furthermore, we desire to
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continue the work on our new GUI architecture towards a capability-based
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desktop environment.
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Milestones
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==========
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Milestones for 2015
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###################
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In the following, there is a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
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In the following, we present a rough schedule of the planned work. As usual,
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it is not set in stone. If you are interested in a particular line of work,
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please get in touch.
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:February - Release 14.02:
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* First version of VirtualBox on NOVA
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* Base-hw: multi-processor support
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* Block cache
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* Component composition tool kit
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:May - Release 14.05:
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* Base-hw: real-time scheduling
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* 3rd-party source-code package management
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* Block-level encryption
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February - Release 15.02
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========================
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:August - Release 14.08:
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* Desktop environment
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* Base-hw: kernel-protected capability-based security
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* TOR on Genode
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* ARM virtualization on top of the base-hw kernel
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* Modularized tooling for automated tests
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May - Release 15.05
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===================
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* Comprehensive documentation of the Genode foundations
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* Kernel-protected capabilities for the base-hw kernel
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* seL4 microkernel as base platform
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* Refined platform-driver architecture (support for MSIs, assignment of
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I/O resources to drivers, standardized configuration)
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August - Release 15.08
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======================
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* Capability-based desktop environment allowing the interactive installation
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and management of Genode subsystems and the interaction with files
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* Accommodation of typical desktop-computing tasks (e.g., email)
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* Interactive tools for observing the system behavior
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* NOVA kernel-resource management
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November - Release 15.11
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========================
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* Achieving cross-kernel binary compatibility
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* Package management
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* Modern web browser
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:November - Release 14.11:
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* Base-hw: virtualization on ARM, support for Cortex-A7
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* Intel wireless
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* NOVA kernel resource management
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