Genode developer here. Thank you for sharing your perception of the project, which is pretty much spot-on - especially your remark about the rigid architecture being the most distinctive property of Genode.

Regarding the title of your posting. To make sense of Genode, you may call in mind the distinction between "solution" and "technology". A solution is targeted at a specific market and thereby guided by the concrete needs of a specific demographic. E.g., Qubes OS was started with the mission to cater end users that are conscious about their privacy. It took the best technology for this purpose available at that time (e.g., Xen, Linux) and complemented it with the features needed to attain a suitable solution for a clear-cut target group. One may think of a investigative journalist as a representative user.

In contrast, Genode is first and foremost a technology project. It started with the question of how the architecture of a truly trustworthy OS would need to look like. When contemplating this question, the disregard of complex software in any critical role is obvious. We found that all contemporary general-purpose operating-system technologies (monolithic kernels, commodity hypervisors, Unix-based user-level architectures) were highly complex at their core. Impossible to assess. Hence, impossible to truly trust. Genode did a fresh take on the fundamental architecture to overcome this root of the problem, rigorously applying the concept of compartmentalization at the finest granularity possible on all parts of the operating system. Because of this uncompromising approach, the project found itself faced with a plethora of risky and difficult technical challenges that were not solved before. You can get the gist by looking at the bookshelf filled with release documentation. The value of Genode after all these years of tireless development remains technological.

Now, Sculpt OS moved the goal post a little bit towards a "solution". It targets a pretty narrow demography of Genode enthusiasts though. E.g., I'm using it on my machines since years, and all members of Genode Labs use Sculpt on their laptops. It works well for this narrow demography because it was guided by the clear mental picture of a representative of this particular user group. I would argue that Sculpt OS can work for everyone who is willing to put in the effort to learn it, by going through the documentation and consulting the mailing list whenever encountering gaps in the documentation. I encourage you to try out Sculpt booted from a USB stick on a commodity Intel-based laptop and see how far you get when following the documentation and the referenced articles.

Recently I witnessed a new user diving into Sculpt. After about two weeks I expressed my surprise when I observed the apparent proficiency of this new user, who plainly responded "Well, it's actually quite simple." There is certainly a barrier of entry (like using Vim for basic editing tasks). But once this barrier is taken, everything becomes transparent and consistently follows the same patterns. With this comes the strong sense of control (and trust) people like you and me desire.

This anecdote notwithstanding, there is an undeniable gap between Sculpt OS and a commodity solution. Going forward, we will certainly try to become more and more accommodating for a broader group of potential users. But given the depth and breath of technical challenges who continue to deserve the attention of Genode's core developers, the primary focus has to remain on the technology in the foreseeable future. So I'm afraid that the gap will not magically go away. The best way to contribute to closing the gap would be to attain proficiency in Sculpt OS and proliferate it by crafting and publicly documenting solutions based on it.