COMP 3000 2011 Report: QuebeOS beta 2
Part 1
Background
Quebes is a very new Operating System based off the Linux OS combined with the Xen Hypervisor and X Windows System GUI aimed primarily at people dealing with confidential information but also anybody who is concerned about their computer security. The first beta was released on Apr 11, 2011 and the 2nd beta was released on Sep 19, 2011. It is actively being developed by Invisible Things Lab and it can be downloaded from here weighing in at a hefty 1.59gb for the x86_64 install dvd.
This OS is designed with the primary goal of being secure. It employs a highly unique and interesting technique to achieve this, it actually runs some of the system components in a virtual machine and it runs user applications in separate user defined virtual machines. This theoretically isolates applications and their memory contents. This makes it such that if one application misbehaves or is maliciously exploited it is unlikely to have an effect on other applications in a separate VM or the running system.