Innovation in the Linux environment

Multiple Systems in Parallel

Poettering gives a concrete example of combining several recent innovations. He describes the possibility of storing and executing multiple operating systems or several instances of a system together with multiple run times and frameworks in a single Btrfs volume.

To illustrate this idea, he sketches out a system in which Fedora, Mandriva, and Arch Linux utilize this model and make corresponding images available. Poettering's sketches assume that developers also adapt the desktop environments and applications. He demonstrates how his ideas can become reality by using sub-volumes in various architectures in a single Btrfs volume. The question of whether different versions of applications like Firefox actually start with Mandriva or Arch Linux becomes irrelevant, because the system assigns an appropriate run time for each of them upon launch.

It will probably take many years for this kind of visionary thinking to become part of the mainstream of the distributions. Even so, an identical concept already exists in a niche distribution called Bedrock. See the article on Bedrock elsewhere in this issue for more information.

Firmware and XDG Apps

The software company Red Hat has legions of developers, some of whom are working on technologies that hold promise for the future. The current release of Fedora (23) includes the possibility of performing firmware updates through Gnome and also XDG apps [19] as a further innovation.

Firmware updates from the system should make the usefulness of components like a USB stick with FreeDOS obsolete when it comes to updating the BIOS on Linux. Using the new technology, it is no longer even necessary to switch into BIOS/UEFI. Instead, the BIOS and other firmware are updated directly through the Gnome app [20] (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Firmware updates that come directly through the Gnome software center would make for greater user convenience.

However, the project is dependent on cooperative efforts from hardware manufacturers. The companies will have to store the updated firmware in a database so that the system can automatically find the firmware and notify the user. A glimmer of hope in this regard is that Dell, the world's largest computer manufacturer, has begun to enter its updates into this type of database [21].

The XDG apps concept is still in the early stages and is included in Fedora 23 as a technology preview (Figure 7). This new app format has been borrowed from cloud computing because it increases security and operability for desktop applications. It also simplifies development processes.

Figure 7: Theoretically, it would be possible to move the Gnome module software as an XDG app between two systems.

This is done by executing applications in their own sandbox which, in principle, isolates them from the remainder of the system similarly to what is done with containers. Thus, developers would be able to distribute applications in packages independent of a particular distribution.

The container format LXC and the OSTree project [22] from Colin Walters serve as the basis for this approach (Figure 8). The latter appears to have borrowed features from Bedrock and the Nix package manager [23] to provide for simultaneous administration of packages of live distributions in a single filesystem.

Figure 8: The OSTree project was one of the important items on the agenda at a meeting of Gnome developers.

Each program in a system running with XDG apps relies on a clearly defined runtime environment even though different environments can exist in a single filesystem. This results in an intersection between the stateless systems referred to above and the /usr filesystem without mutable content.

Developers of Fedora 24 – scheduled to release in June 2016 – are planning a "Gnome IDE Builder," which is said to be able to package XDG apps. Therefore, the "Gnome Software" program should also be capable of dealing with the new format.