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copied!<p>Yes it can be done - see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_%28operating_system%29" rel="nofollow">Singularity</a> which is (was) a Microsoft research project to create an entirely managed operating system in "Sing#" (an extended version of "Spec#" which is itself an extension of C#). <em>Its worth stressing that this was just a research project into the concept, and was never intended as a "full" operating system of the likes of Windows or Max OSX.</em></p> <p>The source code is available on <a href="http://singularity.codeplex.com/" rel="nofollow">CodePlex</a> - you can download the code, build it and run it yourself in an emulator (I've done it myself, its well documented and relativley easy although I can't remember the exact steps myself).</p> <p>Parts of the system were written in assembly / C, specifically the bootloader and the lowest level x86 interupt dispatch code however this is essentially all but unavoidable (it is by its very nature very platform dependant - <em>something</em> needs to write the x86 instructions to control and respond to basic hardware). The low level interrupts are also not particularly interesting in terms of how the operating system actually functions, so I personally don't consider this as cheating the "entirely managed" definition.</p> <p>Looking on the Wikipedia page for Singularity there are also 5-6 similar projects, including Cosmos and a couple of similar attempts that use Java instead of C#.</p> <p>The focus of Singularity OS was on security and dependency, however whats also impressive is that according to some basic benchmarks in <a href="http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDEQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F52716%2Ftr-2005-135.pdf&ei=qMvQTaveJ4jUtQPx3vHFCw&usg=AFQjCNEDhrjA6V3Wbx1oaPPJm0kjaFkZdw" rel="nofollow">An Overview of the Singularity Project1 (PDF)</a> the performance of their archetecture was actually comparable to that of other "more conventional" operating systems:</p> <blockquote> <p>... these numbers demonstrate that architecture that we proposed not only does not incur a performance penalty, but is often as fast as or faster than more conventional architecture. In other words, it is a practical basis on which to build a system.</p> </blockquote>

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