ParaOS is an Application Operating System. What does this mean?

Unlike traditional operating systems, it focuses on providing building blocks (operational guarantees, APIs, code mobility, etc.) for building applications that span multiple computers as opposed to focusing on serving the underlying hardware to applications as in programs in user space.

In order to achieve desirable properties of language interoperability and sandboxing, ParaOS uses WebAssembly as a virtual ISA for programs that it can run.

We build software systems on top of many layers (in the name of focus, efficiency and to avoid reinventing the wheel.) Battlefield-tested foundation that addresses common needs is a great time, money and energy saver.

However, many of the layers we use today have been designed for a different environment, needs and deployment size.

We (predominantly) write code in programming languages that were intended to make programs that run on a single computer, put that code into files and deploy instances of operating systems, the foundations of which were designed about 50 years ago, primarily concerning itself with serving the resources (CPU time, memory, persistence, networking and other peripherals) of an underlying computer to multiple users and their programs.

The systems we develop these days span multiple nodes and heavily rely on lage-scale, highly-available persistence capabilities as opposed to dealing with local files.

So, what if built an operating system for these applications?

ParaOS is currently under active development and is not really usable as it is.

You can, however, check out its code and try what's available at https://github.com/paraexec/paraos