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If I were to ask you, “What is the weirdest Operating System?”… odds are you could quickly think of a few (if not many) possible contenders.
The truth is… there are a great may odd, peculiar operating systems in this world.
But I’m going to propose that “Genode - Sculpt” might earn the prize for the strangest one that is currently under active development.
To be clear: “Weird” does not mean “bad”. Just… weird. In fact, an OS can be both “weird” and “totally rad” all at the same time. Which applies here.
Here’s how theSculpt team describes their system:
Sculpt is an open-source general-purpose OS. It combines Genode'smicrokernel architecture,capability-based security,sandboxed device drivers, andvirtual machines in a novel operating system for commodity PC hardware. Sculpt is used as day-to-day OS by the Genode developers.
Ok. So… what’s “Genode”? Read this whole thing…it’s wild:
The Genode OS Framework is a tool kit for building highly secure special-purpose operating systems. It scales fromembedded systems with as little as 4 MB of memory to highly dynamic general-purpose workloads.
Genode is based on arecursive system structure.Each program runs in a dedicated sandbox and gets granted only those access rights and resources that are needed for its specific purpose.Programs can create and manage sub-sandboxes out of their own resources, thereby forming hierarchies where policies can be applied at each level. The framework provides mechanisms to let programs communicate with each other and trade their resources, but only in strictly-defined manners. Thanks to this rigid regime,the attack surface of security-critical functions can be reduced by orders of magnitude compared to contemporary operating systems.
The framework aligns the construction principles of L4 with Unix philosophy. In line with Unix philosophy, Genode is a collection of small building blocks, out of which sophisticated systems can be composed. Butunlike Unix, those building blocks include not only applications but also all classical OS functionalities including kernels, device drivers, file systems, and protocol stacks.
PHEW.
So. What does Sculpt look and work like?
Here’s what it looks like upon first boot:
After I got to this screen — and clicked everything I could find for several minutes without managing to launch a single application — I realized I needed to read some documentation.
So I did what I almost never do…I followed the tutorial.
Turns out, with Sculpt… the tutorial is 100% necessary.
Just to give you an example… here is how you start using a Sculpt system (and what is required to start installing software). First… you need to select the storage you want to use. In my case, I opted to use a RAM drive. Because… why not?
Then I turned on networking (in the top right corner)… then clicked on the “+”, selected “Depot”, and chose the “genodelabs” depot.
A “depot” in Genode / Sculpt terms is basically a software repository.
At this point I was able to go to the “Depot” and begin installing applications.
But… nothing worked. No applications appeared to show up anywhere.
That’s because, in order to use an application, you must first configure everything that application has access to — what “GUI Server”, clipboard, file system, the works — and then “Add Component” to the system.
In the end, it is possible to add some applications (like a UNIX-y terminal) and begin using the system. But getting there? Is a weird, convoluted process.
And managing the system is always done via that screen-centered list of… components. Which all connect to each other.
The system is fast. And nifty. And terribly weird to use.
But, I’ve gotta say, they chose their “everything is carefully sandboxed” approach and stuck to it with an almost religious conviction. The developers certainly deserve props for that.
So. Is Sculpt the weirdest operating system of all time? Maybe. Maybe not.
But, darn it, it’s a contender.
Seriously.Download it (it’s like 20 MB) and try it out. Just to say you did.
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