D4.11/introduction.md

Stable DECODE OS release

This document accompanies the stable release of the DECODE OS, one of the core development outputs of the DECODE project, aimed at providing a reliable operating system to run application space development in an environment ensuring privacy by design outside of the application domain. This deliverable references, without duplication of information, the research and development done and detailed in previous deliverables D4.1 and D4.4.

The DECODE OS is a GNU+Linux distribution based on Devuan.org to provide a minimalist base for distributed computing micro-services capable of targeting any mainstream hardware platform, from virtual-machines to ARM boards to bare-metal server racks.

The main website for this distribution is https://decodeos.dyne.org

As part of the DECODE OS distribution, backend software applications have been developed to implement

1. a front-end web application to facilitate the adoption of the DECODE continuous integration infrastructure (toaster) https://toaster.dyne.org
2. a continuous integration system to release and customize new versions of DECODE OS (SDK) https://git.devuan.org/sdk
3. a private peer-to-peer network over the Tor protocol (tor-dam) https://github.com/decodeproject/tor-dam

These core features of these three components will be described in the following sections of this document, along with operational instructions.

Due to the experimental stage of development of other components in DECODE and according to the LEAN principles declared in the project, this stable release doesn't only constitute a final point of arrival for this development task. What DECODE OS can do today is facilitating the deployment of lab-tested software applications (for example made in a Docker format, widely adopted by other partners in DECODE) and render these prototypes into a production ready format that can be deployed on the open-hardware DECODE BOX as well on virtual-machines.

We consider this achievement highly beneficial for a project whose development is still in-flux, as well for the free and open source community out there, since the access to the powerful features of the SDK is now made very easy via an integrated continuous pipeline.

In light of these advantages, there is a clear intention within our organisation (mainly by DYNE) to keep maintaining DECODE OS also beyond the span of the project and this very task now concluded, since it greatly helps the manning of prototypes into stable production environments.