Redox OS 0.8.0

By Jeremy Soller on Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Overview

We have a lot to show since the 0.7.0 release! This release, care has been taken to ensure real hardware is working, i686 support has been added, features like audio and preliminary multi-display support have been enabled, and the boot and install infrastructure has been simplified and made more robust. I highly recommend skimming through the changes listed below before jumping into the images, if you want more details. It is also recommended to read through the Redox OS book if you want more information on how to build and use Redox OS.

For this release, I would like to personally thank Ron Williams, who goes by rw_van in the Redox OS chat and GitLab. Ron has provided many valuable contributions for this release, including vast updates to the book, support for building with podman, improvements to the build infrastructure, performing hardware testing, and more. I would also like to thank our Redox OS Summer of Code (RSoC) students, whose work was detailed in prior news posts and much of this work is included in this release. Finally, I would like to thank the donors to Redox OS, for it is their contributions that keep our RSoC program and our infrastructure running. Please consider donating to Redox OS using the links on the Donate page!

Discussion

Links where this release is discussed will be added here. To contact me directly, view the links on my personal website: https://soller.dev/

Supported Hardware

Redox OS generally supports the following hardware, and any issues should be reported as bugs:

CPUs
- Any x86_64 CPU is supported
- i686 CPUs from the Pentium II and up are supported, however, support is not as complete as x86_64 support
Audio
- Audio out is supported with 16-bit samples at 44100 Hz
- AC'97 chipsets are supported (via ac97d)
- Intel HD Audio chipsets are supported (via ihdad)
Display
- Any BIOS supporting VESA BIOS extensions or UEFI system supporting GOP will be supported. Advanced features like multi-display are only available on UEFI systems where the firmware assigns a GOP instance to each display
Ethernet
- Intel Gigabit Ethernet is supported (via e1000d)
- Realtek RTL8168 is supported (via rtl8168d)
- There is an Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet (via ixgbed) driver that I cannot test but may work
Input
- PS/2 keyboards, mice, and touchpads are supported. Laptops generally use PS/2 for the keyboard, and most use PS/2 for the touchpad
Storage
- AHCI (SATA) is supported (via ahcid)
- IDE (PATA) is supported (via ided)
- NVMe is supported (via nvmed)

Redox OS as of this release generally does not support Wi-Fi, USB, and any other hardware not listed above. Please do not report the lack of support until it is specified as generally supported.

Please consider contributing to our hardware compatibility list here: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/redox/-/blob/master/HARDWARE.md

Images

It is recommended to try Redox OS in a VM before trying on real hardware. See the supported hardware section for details on what hardware to select for the best experience. For this release, only x86_64 images are provided, as there is still work to be done on i686 and aarch64 support.

Remember to verify images with sha256sum: https://static.redox-os.org/releases/0.8.0/x86_64/SHA256SUM

Demo

A 768 MiB image containing the standard desktop environment as well as pre-installed demo applications

Live (recommended): https://static.redox-os.org/releases/0.8.0/x86_64/redox_demo_x86_64_2022-11-23_638_livedisk.iso
Pre-installed: https://static.redox-os.org/releases/0.8.0/x86_64/redox_demo_x86_64_2022-11-23_638_harddrive.img

The demo image includes these additional packages:

DOSBox: A DOS emulator
Games using PrBoom:
- DOOM (Shareware)
- FreeDOOM
Neverball and Neverputt: OpenGL games using llvmpipe (performance may vary!)
orbclient: demo orbital application
Periodic Table: an app for viewing information about chemical elements
Redox OS Games: command line games for Redox OS
rodioplay: a music player capable of loading FLAC and WAV files
Sodium: a vi-like editor
sopwith: a classic PC air combat game
syobonaction: a freeware platforming game

Desktop

A 256 MiB image containing only the standard desktop environment. Use this if you want to download a smaller image

Server

A 256 MiB image containing only the command-line environment. Use this if the desktop image is not working well for you

Changes

There have been quite a lot of changes since 0.7.0. I have manually enumerated what I think is important in this list. Links to exhaustive source-level change details can be found in the Exhaustive Details section

General

Vast improvements to the book
Support for i686 (32-bit x86 from the Pentium II and up) has been added, and is generally working on real hardware
Support for aarch64 (64-bit ARM) has been improved, and is booting to login on QEMU. Real hardware is not working yet
Support for multiple displays, if firmware provides framebuffer information
Audio is now generally supported
BIOS and EFI images have been merged, one install can boot on either
The clone and exec syscalls have been moved to userspace. This change also involved the introduction of bootstrap and escalated. bootstrap is a very simply linked program the kernel loads into userspace, that can then handle loading ELF files such as init. escalated provides support for setuid programs like sudo.
Use the redox-daemon crate to simplify setting up daemons
Update cargo lock files on most repositories

`redox`

A work in progress hardware compatibility list was added, please consider contributing your own information: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/redox/-/blob/master/HARDWARE.md
The build system was refactored to allow building multiple architectures in one source tree
Multiple filesystem configs are provided, and can be built side by side in the same source tree. The default is at config/ARCH/desktop.toml, where ARCH is by default x86_64
A demo configuration, providing example applications not present in the desktop configuration, has been added
A build.sh script was added to make building for different architectures and configurations easier
An option for building with podman was added. This option will eventually become the default, as it eliminates many issues with ensuring a clean build environment on any potential Linux distribution a user may want to build on
The bootloader, kernel, and initfs packages are now built by the cookbook like every other package
BIOS and UEFI images have been merged
ISOLinux has been removed, now the bootloader supports booting from CD-ROM and images always have valid ISO headers

`cookbook`

Support for i686 was added
Builds now happen in a architecture specific folder, so multiple architectures can be built in the same source tree
Icons and manifests were added for a number of GUI programs, making them show up in the launcher
Various new recipes were added and many recipes were updated, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/cookbook/-/compare/c9e203a...3d72057

`audiod`

Support for software volume control was added, with the default being 50%, as this ends up working well on real hardware. This volume control works by multiplying the samples by the cube of the volume as a ratio. So, for the default of 50%, each sample is multiplied by 0.125.

`bootloader`

Support for i686 (BIOS) was added
Support for aarch64 (UEFI) was improved
Read performance was increased for BIOS systems
The bootloader can now boot from the same disk image for both BIOS and UEFI systems
CHS (cylinder, head, sector) support has been added for CD boot
ISO metadata was added to all disk images
Framebuffer stride is now provided to the OS
Multiple displays can now be supported, if using UEFI and there is a GOP driver for each display
Various fixes for problems on real hardware, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/bootloader/-/compare/c92ba0b...d398e37

`drivers`

Support for i686 was added
Support for aarch64 was improved
Added AC'97 and IDE drivers, which are common on i686 systems
Intel HD Audio driver has been enabled by default, and has had various improvements:
- Improved detection of best output path. Pin sense information is used, and headphones are prioritized over speakers if they are plugged in
- Improved buffer sizing and usage. This prevents static while ensuring latency is still low. The ac97 driver has identical buffer sizing for consistency
- Ensure all widgets in output path are in power state D0 (on)
- Set headphone amp enable on output pins
- Fix output stream cyclic buffer length
- Ensure all input and output amps in output path are set to 0 dB, based on their reported capabilities
- Wait for output stream to start before completing initialization
- Add a file where codec information can be read audiohw:codec
- Add MSI support
NVMe driver has had fixes to improve real hardware support
PCI driver now supports both 32-bit and 64-bit memory BARs
PS/2 driver has had fixes to ensure more touchpads are working properly
PS/2 driver now handles extended scancodes, providing volume up/down/mute support
RTL8168 driver now supports MSI and MSI-X
USB HID driver can now support QEMU’s USB keyboard, mouse, and touchpad. Real hardware support is blocked pending fixes in the XHCI driver
VESA driver can now handle multiple displays, if information is provided by firmware

`installer`

bootloader, bootstrap, kernel, and initfs are installed from packages and are now placed in /boot
Installs can support both BIOS and UEFI boot
Various fixes for issues on real hardware, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/installer/-/compare/2418286...f710fa7

`kernel`

Support for i686 was added
Support for aarch64 was improved
clone syscall was removed, replaced by userspace
exec syscall was removed, replaced by userspace
Support for userspace manipulation of address spaces was added
Kernel memory space was greatly simplified
RMM integration was completed, old recursive paging code has been removed
Support for reading partial time between timer ticks, with very high accuracy
Highly accurate CPU time is now stored per context and shown in sys:context
Internal time tracking changed to u128 of nanoseconds
Preemptive context switch timer reduced to 6.75ms, to reduce latency
llvm_asm replaced with new asm macro
initfs scheme moved to userspace
Fixes for real hardware issues
The kernel in particular had a lot of changes this cycle, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/kernel/-/compare/b5a9301...d298459. The syscall crate also changed to support these kernel changes, and those changes are included

`orbital`

Support for multiple displays, if firmware provides information
Pass super keypresses to launcher, which allows the launcher to specify shortcuts like Super+T for launching a terminal, Super+B for launching a browser, and Super+F for launching a file manager
Improvements for relative mouse cursor handling (used often by games)
Improved reliability when displays are resized (supported by VirtualBox)
Volume can be changed with volume keys or Super+[ for volume down, Super+] for volume up, and Super+\\ for volume toggle
On-screen display when volume changes

`orbutils`

Autofill username if there is only one user (usually user on a Redox image)
Do not keep login background resident in memory
Support loading background on multiple displays
Show categories in start menu if defined in manifests. Games is a new category, for example

`redoxfs`

Modify disk cache size for lower memory systems, it is now 16 MiB and is pre-allocated
Various improvements, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/redoxfs/-/compare/0e0ae52...f601b2a

`relibc`

Support for i686 was added
Support for aarch64 was improved
clone and exec syscall implemented with redox-exec crate
Varous fixes for dynamic linking and C applications, see detailed link: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/relibc/-/compare/7f3f2fa...ee0193a

Exhaustive Details

Here is an exhaustive list of changes, generated by the new changelog script: