SerenityOS update (February 2024)

Summary

Andreas, Andrew, and Nico host a monthly update on SerenityOS developments. They showcase new features including automatic escalation to superuser when launching apps requiring root access, a ported Sonic fan game, interactive copy utility prompts before overwriting files, hexadecimal dumping utilities, improved calendar event handling, FAT filesystem creation utility, enhancements to hex editor's toolbars and popouts, progress on RISC-V support, and PDF rendering improvements like better colors, more rendered text glyphs, and new image format support.

Takeaways

• 😀 A new password prompt was added when launching apps that require root access from the taskbar
• 📝 Improvements were made to the SDL port while getting the Sonic Robo Blast 2 game running on SerenityOS
• ➕ The cp command now has an interactive mode that asks before overwriting files
• i The cut command gained a new -c flag to select specific characters
• 🔎 The xxd hex dump utility was added to complement the existing hexdump tool
• 🗓 Enhancements were made to the calendar app like better month/year views and basic event support
• 💾 A new utility can create empty FAT filesystem images that could be mounted with future loop device support
• ⚙️ The Hex Editor sidebar panels were improved using a widget container for detachability
• 🤝 Progress was made on RISC-V bringup targeting the SiFive HiFive Unleashed board
• 🖨 PDF rendering gained text support, better colors via CMYK simulation, and CCIT image decoding

Q & A

What new feature was added to help applications that require super user access launch from the taskbar?

A password prompt was added so that applications like Partition Editor that need root access can request escalation to super user when launched from the taskbar instead of just failing to run.

What game was ported to SerenityOS this month and helped drive SDL improvements?

A Sonic the Hedgehog fangame called Sonic Robo Blast 2 was ported to SerenityOS by contributors like refrag and yella.

What new flag was added to the CP command line utility?

An interactive mode flag was added so CP asks if you want to override an existing file when copying instead of just overwriting it automatically.

What is the hex dump utility that was added this month?

The xxd hex dump utility was added by Nils, providing an alternative hex dumping tool to the existing hexdump command.

What improvements were made to the calendar application this month?

Domino refactored the month and year views to use GML properties for cleaner code, and senel made it so calendar events now show up when you double click on a day.

What new FAT filesystem creation tool was added?

A new ms.fat utility was added that can format image files as FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32 filesystems.

How were Hex Editor's side toolbars improved?

The search results, value inspector, annotations, etc. were moved to use the dynamic widget container, allowing them to be popped out, moved around, and docked.

What Progress was made on the RISC-V port?

Son and Leon made lots of progress booting Serenity on the HiFive Unleashed board, adding missing kernel functionality needed for RISC-V hardware.

What text rendering improvements were made in the PDF viewer?

More PDF text glyphs are now rendered instead of omitted, and CMYK images are better simulated to match real printed output.

What new image format can the PDF viewer now display?

Support was added for the CCIT image compression format thanks to work by Lucas.

Outlines

00:00

😊 Improved super user access and escalation in Serenity OS

This paragraph discusses new functionality that prompts for a password when trying to launch apps that require super user access from the taskbar in Serenity OS. This allows for smooth escalation to root access when needed instead of just failing to launch the app. The feature was implemented for the partition editor app and works via the assistant as well.

05:01

🤔 Issues with man pages and documentation in command line utilities

This paragraph tries to demonstrate new features in some command line utilities like the -C flag in cut and interactive mode in cp. However, there are issues accessing the man pages for these utilities and the documentation needs to be improved. The difference between cut's -B and -C flags related to bytes versus characters is also unclear.

10:02

😎 Progress on FAT filesystem support and mounting image files in Serenity OS

This paragraph shows the new ms-fat utility for creating FAT filesystems and formatting image files as FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32. However, mounting these image files does not work yet since loop device support is still in progress. The hex editor is also demonstrated with its improved toolbar and docking features.

15:04

💪 Advances in RISC-V bringup for Serenity OS

This paragraph discusses recent work by contributors to improve RISC-V support in the Serenity OS kernel. This is being done to help boot Serenity on real RISC-V hardware. The device tree support should also aid RISC-V and ARM bringup going forward.

20:07

🎉 PDF engine improvements bring better text, images and colors to Serenity OS

This paragraph shows off recent improvements in Serenity's PDF rendering engine. It now handles more text and fonts, has better colors through CMYK simulation, and supports the CCIT image format. This allows more accurate rendering of PDF documents in the PDF viewer.

Keywords

💡Serenity OS

Serenity OS is an open source operating system built from scratch. The video provides monthly updates on new developments and improvements to Serenity OS across different areas like the browser, kernel, applications etc. It highlights the collaborative nature of the project with over 1000 contributors on GitHub.

💡Taskbar

The taskbar is a user interface element in Serenity OS that allows launching applications. The video demonstrates a new taskbar feature where apps needing superuser access like the Partition Editor now prompt for a root password instead of just failing to launch.

💡Sonic Robo Blast 2

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a fan-made game featuring the Sonic franchise. The video shows how it was ported to work on Serenity OS this month, driving improvements in Serenity's SDL graphics library.

💡Command Line Utilities

The video highlights some command line utilities like cp and cut getting enhanced with new features this month. It demonstrates the interactive copy mode in cp and tries to decipher the new cut -c option.

💡Hex Dump

Hex dumps show content of files or data in hexadecimal format. The improved hex editor app now has annotations and detachable side panels for inspecting values. The video also shows the xxd hex dump utility added this month.

💡Calendar

Serenity's calendar app saw some refinements like cleaner internal handling of month and year views. It also starts showing events on dates, allowing adding and viewing basic event details.

💡FAT32

The video demonstrates a new command line tool to create FAT32 formatted disk images. It shows using a hex editor to inspect the FAT32 header of the generated image file.

💡PDF rendering

Serenity's PDF viewer saw upgrades to render more text content from PDF files. There are also improvements in handling CMYK colors and support added for the CCIT image format.

💡RISC-V

RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA). The video mentions work being done to improve Serenity OS support on RISC-V devices like the HiFive board.

💡Developers

The video highlights Serenity OS' open, collaborative development environment across areas like the kernel, applications, games etc. It invites interested developers to contribute and join the Discord community.

Highlights

Applications that require super user access now ask for a password in the taskbar

Ported Sonic Robo Blast 2 game to SerenityOS, driving SDL improvements

Added interactive mode to CP copy utility to prompt before overwriting files

Added cut utility with new -C flag to select specific characters

Added xxd hex dump utility

Improved calendar with better month and year views

Calendar now shows events in month and year views after creating them

Added FAT filesystem creation utility

Hex editor tool windows now use widget containers for better management

Progress on risk 5 support including device tree implementation

PDF engine renders more text content from PDF files

Better color handling for CMYK images in PDF renderer

PDF renderer now supports CCIT image format

Over 1,000 contributors now working on SerenityOS project

Recent progress sets stage for many future improvements to SerenityOS

Transcripts

well hello friends welcome to the

serenity OS update for February

2024 it's been another comfy month in

the project we've had just over 800

commits from about 50 uh individual

authors and the browser stack is by far

the most active area as usual uh and we

already covered that yesterday in the

ladybird update but uh we do still see a

bunch of development happening in random

places throughout all of Serenity OS so

today uh myself Andrew and Nico are

going to show you some of the stuff

that's been going on in February uh and

I think we'll start with

um this new thing in taskbar where uh

applications that require super user

access so rout to access basically uh

such as partition editor it now asks for

a password Here previously it would just

fail so if you were to try to run it

from the command line as a normal user

it will complain and say that oh I can't

I have to be root because I need to open

raw block

devices um but launching it from

the uh taskbar um it now automatically

tries to escalate to super user so if I

type in my password here which is Foo uh

it will well it will fail to actually

find a partition table because I'm

booting um dis L using this or not dis L

but I'm I'm booting without a partition

table using a qmu feature uh so it's

it's still fails to bring our partition

editor but even so um this is very very

nice because when you're launching apps

from uh taskbar I'm not sure if we have

anything else that requires root um but

when you're launching apps in this way

you don't want to just fail um if it

requires root access it wants to you

want to be prompted for a password uh

and this should also work in assistant

so if I were to run partition editor

from here yeah it also ask for a

password let me type it wrong password

yeah

that also works um maybe I should be

allowed to try again if I type the wrong

password that seems like it could be a

little bit of a good feature

anyway then uh oh uh the automatic

escalation to super user here in in GUI

was implemented by Hugh so thank you

Hugh for working on this I think it's a

really really nice quality of life thing

um a totally different thing that is

also new this month and a bunch of

people have contributed to I think well

um somebody named refrag and also yella

has been helping out uh but we have a

port of this um I guess Sonic fan game

called Sonic Robo blast um two and let's

see if it actually launches yes it seems

to

um so this has driven a bunch of

improvements to our sdl port as well

this month uh and it's some kind of

Sonic game I'm not a big Sonic gamer

myself but I can

certainly

appreciate that um that this

exists and

um well I I don't know how to play uh

other than running around and I assume

I'm supposed to take these

Rings uh it also has my Mouse controls

but I don't understand how they're

supposed to work I'm probably meant to

um run without the

magical um VM Mouse

driver anyways uh if you enjoy playing

sonic Robo Blast 2 you can now do so on

Serenity OS thanks to refrag so thank

you refrag for reporting this game and

um I'm just going to get out of

here and apparently it crashes on exit

but it has a cool app icon that's pretty

nice uhhuh

uh-huh okay well might be something to

look into with our sdl Port there uh

anyways then we have some um command

line utility uh improvements this month

so I know the CP utility received a new

flag so uh Eric implemented the

interactive mode for CP which is when

you have a file and you're trying to

copy it um and the copy would overwrite

another file it will now ask if you want

to override it you can say like nuh-uh I

don't want to um or you can say yeahaha

I do want to so that was added by Eric

thank you Eric uh it's really nice that

our um various utilities sort of keep

getting more and more command line Flags

added to them and then what did I do

here I brought up the

help

accidentally I'm supposed to open the

man page for CP but I guess we don't

have

one we do wait a minute so why doesn't

it take me there what is

this this doesn't work right at all

okay

so I think the IDE no this this needs um

this needs to be fixed but uh we're not

going to do that right

now um and then Kyle did something

called cut- C which I'm not familiar

with but that's like uh select only

these characters with

cut does cut have a man

page oh of course it does it's really

cool that um we have more and more Man

pages for

everything and of course you can can

browse them in this beautiful app which

it's kind of strange that this isn't how

you browse Man pages on other unixes

because like why isn't

it

um okay so cut but I don't see any

examples for dash C so I guess we have

to figure out and- C is missing in the

options list

too okay well we are finding all kinds

of issues here so I guess we have to

guess what cut- C does so it's supposed

to select only these character

characters so I will make a list of

characters I guess so uh Fu and then we

will cut um only the

O what does that

do invalid by SL character position

oh

okay

um oh is it like I only want that one

character

so wait so I'm removing a specific

character is that it so if I Echo test

and I would cut out character

to okay and how is that different from

Dash

B hm bytes versus

characters okay well I'm not exactly

sure what the difference is but if you

know please leave a comment explaining

what the difference is um all right and

then the final command line utility that

uh was added this month xxd which is uh

hex dump utility so we can now hex dump

our password file and it looks like

this and we actually had hex dump before

uh which has just like a slightly

different output format and I'm not sure

why but like most unixes have both xsd

and hex dump I've been on machines in

the past that had only one or the other

so I'm like familiar with both but I

don't know what the backstory is like um

I'm sure there's there's history there

but um xxd was added this month by Nils

so thank you Nils for adding xxd now the

uh hex dumping story on Ser OS is

getting pretty

good all right let's uh visit somebody

else

well hello friends I'm going to talk

about a couple uh sorted changes to

Serenity this month uh first of all

we've got the calendar so uh the past

couple uh months uh we've been improving

the calendar bit by bit uh it's still

quite uh quite basic but this month uh

Domino made some changes to the way that

the month view and year view work

internally so this is a little bit

cleaner and um now it's hand handled via

gml property so uh thanks for that

Domino and also in the uh realm of

events uh senel made it so that after I

enter an event here uh some something

happens at this day at 3 p.m.

for 5

minutes um so before we would just see

that oh there's an event on this day we

don't even see it in the year view but

now if I double click here we can see

that uh there are some events here now

uh this is definitely uh First Step um

but we didn't have this before and I can

even add a new event and something

else Happ these um maybe this thing

starts at 8:00 p.m. and goes for 3 hours

um and now after we see that we can see

that uh that event also shows up here

though it doesn't uh

doesn't show the end time and it doesn't

let me it doesn't show the duration and

it doesn't let me edit the event so

there's uh still quite a lot we can do

to make the calendar uh more of a fully

fledged calendar application U but it's

been coming along nicely these last

couple months so thanks for everyone

who's been working on

that all righty don't need to save that

so uh implicit field added something

interesting this month which is a uh fat

FS uh creation utility so if I create an

empty file here that is 128 megab and

call it fat 32.

IMG this takes a little bit longer than

it probably should to write out these

128 megabytes to our EXT2 file system

but after that I can call this um

ms.fat

utility which doesn't quite have that

many options but it does let us choose

between fat 12 fat 16 and fat 32 U which

have all had implementations in our

kernel

recently

um all right so if I make fs. fat type

32 on F 32.

IMG um this will create

a fat

32 it will format that empty file it

created as fat 32 now unfortunately we

can't actually um Mount that file cuz we

don't have Loop device support the line

saw in the prq that's something that um

leav is working on so hopefully we can

get that in soon and start mounting

files all over the place but um you you

just have to trust me that this is uh

fat 32 for for a second here um so that

brings us to our our next demo here

which is inex

editor and let's open this fat 32. IMG

file

yes um so we can see that this fat 32

IMG file does have the fat header at the

top it says it's fat 32 it's got

some uh text there and I believe this

also has some x86 code in here to act as

a master boot record

um so very cool and of course the rest

of the file system is completely

empty but um ah what I wanted to show in

HEX editor today is that uh Sam

and um a little bit on the on the side

of Tim lead better have been improving

this guey a lot so what uh what Sam

added was the fact that um you know

we've always had well we've had for a

while these extra um

toolbars or these extra tools the uh the

search results the value inspector and

Sam M at these annotations I believe

Onre um

added that

recently sure and now this this bite is

highlighted um but what was uh new this

month is that now all of these toolbars

are using the dynamic widget container

that torson added last year uh I believe

it was in the fall so not only can we

I'm not sure if this was in before but

we can collapse these these tool windows

inside this um this widget here on the

right side but we can also pop out so if

I wanted to pop out the value inspector

here um it would pop out and I can move

it around the screen and whatever else

and as

I edit things here I can go back to my

value inspector and see that it is I

believe it's looking at this maybe it's

not but I mean of course I can full

screen this it doesn't really do much

but if I close the X here maybe this

should be a different button um it will

pop back in uh which is pretty nice so

this is a really cool uh toolbar feature

that uh like I mentioned torson added

last year I'm not sure how many

applications are using it um I imagine

this could be useful for hack Studio or

other applications we have that have uh

interesting toolbar windows and can also

drag these around and and move which one

is on top which is pretty awesome so uh

nice work uh Sam and torson and uh a

little bit on Tim's part for helping us

improve the hex Editor to make it uh

make it

snappy all right and the last thing I

want to talk about today is that uh

we've been having a lot of improvement

on the risk five front so this is

something that son and Leon and um uh

film have been working on um though I

think film is a little bit busy with

school lately but son and Leon have been

chatting it up in the risk 5 Channel

lately they've been adding all sorts of

features to help son uh boot there I

believe it's a Sci-Fi

Vision

2 uh single board computer they have on

their desk um I believe there's still

some some local patches that need to go

in before we can actually demo that

either in qmu or um before they can send

us a a video of them booting it booting

Serenity on that uh single board

computer but uh those fixes have been

going in um been a little bit less

activity on the arm 64 front um um as

the contributors who are interested in

that have been working on other things

but uh it's good to see the risk five

support go in and I know that Leon has

been working a lot on the

um the device tree support um which

should help uh both risk VI and uh arm

64 uh going forward for whatever boards

we want to support for that so um nice

work on the kentel front from them all

right uh well hello friends I'm Nico

Andreas asked me me to demo a few

improvements uh in PDF Tech in seren

here this month uh so let's take a look

uh on my screen I have uh two versions

of um seren PDF engine the old un busted

version on the left and the new and

unbedded app which is basically all of

seren's PDF code like seren text

rendering seren's image decoders seren

everything it's just like a very small

thin Coco window that shows the bit map

that uh s's code um renders if you use

PDF Vier and ceni everything should look

the same and behave the same except the

U are much nicer over there of course

okay so uh here's the the first uh

example PDF um like one big different

there's like basically three

improvements one is better colors this

second is better like more text and the

third is like a new image format uh

which we'll all look at so for these two

um example or for this one example PDF

as you can tell um we render we now

render all the text that's on the page

um well we don't on the left side and

there's like a bunch of pages in here

and on the left hand side you can tell

like we like get quite a bit right

already we have like nice colors um for

the most part um and lots of images on

the right hand side we now do text and

if you like close look closely you'll

also see that the shade of green at the

top is um a little less uh shrill on the

right and the reason for that is that we

now um for images that use the device

CMYK cutter based we now simulate how uh

this int uh this ink would look um if

you printed that on paper um so here's

like an example this is a photograph of

my screen so we can like enhance a

little bit and zoom in on this screen

text here and enhance a little more and

as you can tell um a pixel consists of

three little lights one red one green

one blue and um a bitmap basic controls

for every pixel how bright these three

lights are so I think this is like

pretty well known if you do the same for

like a book here's a photograph of a

book that I'm currently reading over and

over again we can enhance that little

tool like zoom in zoom in zoom in a lot

more and you can tell like here you can

see the white of the page in the

background and there there's four four

colors that get printed um there's uh

cyan over here then magenta over here

and over here yellow over here and black

uh over here which is abbreviated

CMYK and you uh this printing technology

I think is called off offset printing or

something like that I don't know a ton

about it but you can tell that the like

yellow dots are kind of like an

rectangular grid

the magenta dots are also an uh

rectangular grid that's rotated 45°

relative to the yellow grid and then the

Canan grid is rotated 22.5 de relative

to the yellow grid probably just

eyeballing and black is uh rotated

22.5 degrees in the other

direction and so if you have a cmk bit

map um this is like meant to be printed

and if you print

this um on paper then normally um not

normally then you don't end up like with

these Trill colors you get when you just

do like the math conversion where you uh

invert all the cmy um channels and then

multiply them by the inverted um K

Channel um so now we get

like something that looks more close uh

looks much closer to what you get if you

like actually printed this page and this

is also what all the other um PDF

viewers

do um so yeah um better texts and better

colors um here's another example of a

file that looked like mostly okay

previously but now we get like the uh

ellipses and the quotes

right and yeah like most other Pages

were before uh we're fine before already

I guess uh we know also get these

bullets

right another example of a PDF that's I

think

uh teachers people who speak Vietnamese

how to speak Japanese

but I don't know Vietnamese so maybe I

don't maybe that language is wrong um

and you can also tell that we now show

like both the Japanese and the

Vietnamese text uh while we didn't do

that

previously

um and we you can also like slightly see

the CMYK improvement over

here and uh this little thing that we

all already got right before is uh like

yet another font type um but we that

support for that is a new uh and then

here's the the third new thing uh we now

have support for the ccit image format

or at least for like some forms of it uh

this was implemented by Lucas so thank

you

Lucas so now like on the next page I

think the the background of this text is

also

ccit and here's like a last demo PDF

which aren't on the same page so on the

left L that's um again uh we get like

way more glyphs and

um on some pages that's very dramatic

you can also tell we don't draw rotate

the text quite right yet we like know

the direction but we don't rotate the

glyphs

um yeah and that's basically all I had

um so we'll see what happens next month

uh

and that's all the stuff we wanted to

show you today so thank you so much for

stopping by and uh checking out what

we've been working on uh thank you so

much to my co-hosts Andrew and Nico

really really nice to have you on here

and um if you want to come chat you'll

find us in the serenity OS Discord

server uh there's a link to that in the

video description um we're always open

for new developers and um it's really

cool we recently passed 1,000

contributors on

GitHub and I think that's awesome um

over a thousand people have worked on

Serenity OS at this point and can't

believe how far we've come and somehow

in a way it still feels like it is just

the beginning um

so very interesting times anyways thanks

for checking this out today and I will

see you all next time bye