The quest for ever more realistic simulations requires multi-physics and multi-scale models combined with state-of-the-art numerical methods such as high-order discretizations, fast solvers and adaptivity for the sub-problems. The Distributed and Unified Numerics Environment (DUNE) is a software framework to realize mesh-based computations on serial and parallel computers. Abstract interfaces offer reusability while generic programming techniques enable high performance. The talk highlightes the main ideas of the approach and gives some details of the grid and solver components.