14 DAY TRIAL // Forget about MinWin and Microsoft Singularity. You can now download the open source Cosmos operating system. MinWin is of course the kernel of Windows 7, the next version of the Windows platform and the successor of Windows Vista. Throughout 2007, Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut and his teams have labored to strip the Windows kernel of all dependencies in order to create a low footprint code for Windows 7.
Singularity is an operating system project from Microsoft research that has reached Version 1.0 stage and was shipped to selected company partners. Nothing more than a research operating system prototype, Singularity is in fact a non-Windows platform written in C, C++ and C#. In this context, MinWin, the Windows 7 kernel, and Singularity have almost nothing in common.
At the same time, the Cosmos open source microkernel is very close to Singularity. "Officially is it the 'C# Open Source Managed Operating System', but we just go by Cosmos. In fact, the name Cosmos was chosen before any meaning was attributed to it. Later we decided by chance what the letters stood for. Thus it is also Cosmos, and not COSMOS or CosmOS," reads a message on the FAQ page for Cosmos.
Cosmos is in fact closely connected with Microsoft, while at the same time having nothing to do with the Redmond company. The C# Open Source Managed Operating System is the creation of Chad Hower, a former Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism, and currently Microsoft Regional Director. But at the same time, Cosmos is an independent open source product, licensed under BSD. Hower has revealed that the current bit version is heading for the Wii, One Laptop Per Child and even the iPhone.
"Who doesn't want to build their own OS? Cosmos provides all the legos and lets you forget the hard parts of writing low level kernel pieces, and unlike other OS's does not force you into C++. Use C# (or any .NET language), plug the legos that you need, and build your shell," the team revealed.