The Redox project has posted its usual monthly update, and this time, we’ve got a major milestone creeping within reach.
Thanks to Anhad Singh for his amazing work on Dynamic Linking! In this southern-hemisphere-Redox-Summer-of-Code project, Anhad has implemented dynamic linking as the default build method for many recipes, and all new porting can use dynamic linking with relatively little effort.
This is a huge step forward for Redox, because relibc can now become a stable ABI. And having a stable ABI is one of the prerequisites for Redox to reach “Release 1.0”.
↫ Ribbon and Ron Williams
A major step forward for Redox, and one of those things not everyone might think about when they consider the state of an operating system. This wasn’t all of the news this month, though, as Redox also received a port of the LOVE game engine, which powers quite a few successful indie games, like the recent hit Balatro. Thanks to this port, you can now play Balatro on Redox, which is pretty cool – and highlights just how far Redox has already come. On top of these major two headlines, there’s a ton of improvements all over the operating system, mostly at the lower levels.
The recent rate of evolution has been impressive. It also seems that the team has grown a bit. It may not be long before Redox is very exciting.
I mean, the fact that they can already run LLVM/Rust, OpenSSL, Mesa3D, and a full RISC-V virtual machine is already quite an achievement.
It is one thing to say that you want to be a general-purpose alternative to Linux and BSD but it is another thing to pull that off. But that is not even the limit of their ambition. They are writing their own C library in Rust. The whole OS is in Rust actually. They are writing their own COW filesystem (like ZFS, Btrfs, or Bcachefs). They created their own GUI (Orbital). The system is already multi-platform. And they are actually pulling it all off with a fully microkernel architecture.
It is interesting to think of Linux at the same point in its history. The most advanced file system would have been Ext2. It would have just recently gotten multi-processor support. It was right around the time that USB was added (Redox still lacks that). And it was just before GNOME 1 was added as the GUI in Red Hat Linux. And Linux only got that far by leveraging the entire GNU stack along with little things like XFree86. What is most interesting is to think of how fast Linux evolved after this point though. The next step would have been the Red Hat 7+ days that led to Fedora within a couple of years. Even Fedora Core 1 looks and feels fairly modern still (though still 32 bit of course).
What would really be interesting is if Redox added support for hosting OCI containers at some point (Docker). They are going to need to add Wayland at some point as well I would think.
The Redox team is still tiny though. The real challenge will be hardware support as you are not going to be a Linux alternative, or even BSD, without that. Of course, with virtualization (eg. Proxmox) and “the cloud”, there is still a lot of interesting stuff you can do these days even with limited driver support–as long as you support the right drivers).
It may already be the most advanced Open Source general-purpose microkernel operating system. I mean, it must be giving GNU HURD a run for its money.
Docker solved a problem of Linux. Mostly the difference between distros. It would be better to not replicate those differences.
Not that I am against OCI container but that’s only helpful on Redox as somewhat sw distribution.
Security wise it would be better to have a clear cut easy but flexible security system in places.
Linuxes (UX) is to simple and and inflexible. And to complex when extended (Apparmor/SELinux).
Windows security is flexible and powerful but a mess and in-transparent.
Quote: “It may already be the most advanced Open Source general-purpose microkernel operating system. I mean, it must be giving GNU HURD a run for its money.”
I would argue that Genode is probably more “advanced” insofar as it incorporates more novel concepts of what an OS is, whereas Redox merely evolve Unix a little.
However I strongly agree that it fulfils most of the promises made by GNU HURD. Unfortunately (as far as GNU are concerned) it is MIT licensed (Genode by contrast is under AGPL). I am sure they have their reasons but I believe in the spirit of GPL these days.
What i would like to ask Thom, without prejudice and with utmost respect: why is the site still made for 1024×768, it is easy to set the scaling for mobile and widescreen 2 or 4 k or even 5k CRT by using variable width on the site and collumns. This has been possible since at least netscape 2.0, www1, Webpositive, omniweb and IE since their very start. Today it should be standard.
Why does your page take up 15th of the space available in width? Perhaps a redisign is in order.
the sollution should not be to buy a lower resolution screen or “zoom in”
Probably because of the underlying CMS/web framework. Never change a running system. ;-D
AnAmigian,
Let’s not forget that 640×480 is the resolution chosen by god.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dQumAULdCE
RIP Terry Davis
Ah yes, true. I remember when we put out the first generation TFT screen with 1024×768 and the people wanted them set to 640×480 which led to muddy pictures or a big gray border (not scaling) ;-D