Microsoft (finally) releases Singularity, the research oriented operating system

It's been in development for nearly half a decade, but this year at Microsoft's R&D extravaganza TechFest, the company finally lifted the curtain on its research-oriented Singularity OS. Let's just be clear from the get-go, though: while it's available for immediate use, Singularity is nowhere near anything you'd replace your desktop OS with. The sole intention here is to test out futuristic new concepts in application interaction, microkernel architecture, and so on, so don't expect to hear that Microsoft is hanging up the Vista apron or anything. But for the turbo-geeks in the crowd, the Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) 1.1 is now available for download for academic non-commercial use. And for the rest of us, well, we'll just see what the year 2011 holds in store.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - Brush up on your Singularity theory
Read - Download that biz

[Alex Padilla @ Mar 5th 2008 2:45AM]

Hmm, this is pretty interesting. I might have to check this out.

But I have a question, Ryan. Why the hell are we still awake?

[David Taraso @ Mar 5th 2008 2:50AM]

Judging by the number of typos in this story, he's not very awake :P

[Ryan Block @ Mar 5th 2008 3:06AM]

Ugh, thanks, made a few corrections. That 17th straight hour of work can wear on a guy.

[wung @ Mar 5th 2008 3:06AM]

i don't see any typos, maybe i'm not very awake ... =P

[DarkLightConnection Unbanned @ Mar 5th 2008 3:08AM]

Guess I'm also not very awake becase I onl see one typo

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 5th 2008 3:08AM]

Or maybe he already corrected them. ;)

[DarkLightConnection Unbanned @ Mar 5th 2008 3:10AM]

Ryan, there's still a typo...: while it's is available

[Saad Rabia @ Mar 5th 2008 3:22AM]

Is it okay for normal people to read this? I'm scared from the picture.

[thedesolate1 @ Mar 5th 2008 3:41AM]

What we really want to know is.... will it find Sarah Connor?

[teej @ Mar 5th 2008 10:57AM]

judging by the picture, it's actually the FINAL nail in HD-DVD's coffin.

[Robert in Texas @ Mar 5th 2008 4:04AM]

Can you play Crysis on it?

[Jeff @ Mar 5th 2008 4:06AM]

The diagram makes it look like it's at the bottom of a black hole.

[nine9nin @ Mar 5th 2008 4:18AM]

It is the "Event Horizon" is the mouth of the black hole

[Shane @ Mar 5th 2008 7:11AM]

I always knew Vista would spawn a giant black hole...

[Josh @ Mar 5th 2008 10:12AM]

event horizon was a pretty good movie, gates better not be planning any of that time travel crap though

[OneLove @ Mar 5th 2008 10:24AM]

The bottom of a black hole is vista.

[apullin @ Mar 5th 2008 4:24AM]

Boots fine in Virtual PC .... doesn't boot fine on my X61 :( wah wah

[Nick Carchidi @ Mar 5th 2008 4:49AM]

Nice Picture! Maybe Microsoft will get so power-hungry that they might go into the black hole/worm hole production/research area and take over the world! hahahahhah! I'm sorry, but it is almost 5 a.m. here.

[PJK @ Mar 5th 2008 5:18AM]

Nearly half a decade? So 4 years? Doesn't sound nearly as epic when you say it that way though, sounds more like a normal development time for any large software project.

[Sens @ Mar 5th 2008 5:35AM]

Thats just typical Ryan Block bias - dont worry about that... you'll get used to it!

[xthaox @ Mar 5th 2008 5:50AM]

You know, for a second I was thinking 'half a century' when I read the post, and then I realized: no, that's not right, MS wasnt even there in the 50s! Yeah Maybe I'm not very awake right now..

[Ryan Block @ Mar 5th 2008 11:29AM]

Actually, 2003 -- so about five years.

[Hung @ Mar 5th 2008 8:13PM]

Yeah, Mr. Block needs to stop showing his blatant favoritism for Microsoft products. It's tearing this family apart. :(

[skyman375 @ Mar 5th 2008 8:05AM]

Can you install it on Parallels? I'd like to try it, and the virtual environment seems perfect for that?

[Richard Weeks @ Mar 5th 2008 8:08AM]

Is it me or does the picture accompanying this story show Windows disappearing down a black hole?

[qwertyblue @ Mar 5th 2008 8:46AM]

I didn't think the singularity was gonna happen until 2029??

[tcc3 @ Mar 5th 2008 9:33AM]

Thats a relief. Since the world ends in 2012 that whole singularity business is just worry for nothing.

[boe @ Mar 5th 2008 9:40AM]

Don't do it!!!!! If this OS is anything like Vista, it could slow research to a crawl...

[tanooki2003 @ Mar 5th 2008 10:05AM]

Am I the only one who has seen this similar image on the Simpsons. You remember it was a Halloween episode where Homer gets stuck in a 3D world when hiding from Patty and Selma? The image come just as Homer kicks a pointy cone and it pierces a hole in the floor, in turn causing the world to collapse in the black hole using the same image as shown in the blog.

[thedesolate1 @ Mar 5th 2008 11:01AM]

lmao yeah i remember it was one of the Halloween specials. Homer went into a weird 3d world and i remember him saying "I am somewhere where I don't know". lol classic. Then he got hit by a 3d cone in the head and the ground started sucking him in.

[Lucius @ Mar 5th 2008 10:10AM]

So half a decade? It still hasn't been in production as long as Duke Nukem Forever.

[d0n0van @ Mar 5th 2008 10:15AM]

I used it to run the 'Hello World!' program I wrote 22 years ago in class and got a BSOD.

[ethana2 @ Mar 23rd 2008 6:31PM]

I'll take a segfault over that anyday. I mean, how the /heck/ does an /application/ crash an OS?
That makes no sense.

[OneLove @ Mar 5th 2008 10:23AM]

so thats why Vista sucks!

[Loonie @ Mar 5th 2008 11:33AM]

Ah, so the next iteration of Windows will simply suck money and processing power out of the universe.

[nikster @ Mar 5th 2008 11:43AM]

Fine, so I am a "turbogeek" - thought I was a plain old regular geek until now.

Reading the article, it looks like the singularity project is where Microsoft put all those smart people it hired over the years. Or maybe those who couldn't take the Vista crapfest anymore.. it sounds like it is what Vista should have been. Actual under-the-hood enhancements instead of "the shiny", efficiency instead of bloat. And a security concept at kernel level that sounds like it would work. I wonder why they even bothered with Vista? Wrong priorities in Redmond...

[macserv @ Mar 5th 2008 2:09PM]

Oh for f***'s sake... A concept operating system called "Singularity"? Not since "One World, One Web, One Browser," has Microsoft made its intentions so clear with its marketing.

[ethana2 @ Mar 23rd 2008 6:29PM]

It would be interesting to see what OS market share would be like if mass media marketing didn't exist.
...grassroots FTW.
*cough*ubuntu*cough*
...maybe canonical will start running ads though, hard to say.. Maybe Dell will do it for 'em :)

[john @ Mar 5th 2008 3:10PM]

It sucks so hard, it bends even the best idea.


It's so bloaty that its mass bends space-time.


It sucks so bad, good ideas go in and are never seen again.

[ax0n @ Mar 5th 2008 4:03PM]

So... You're saying this is kind of like Plan 9 from Bell Labs, right?

[David Fitzy @ Mar 5th 2008 4:51PM]

Singularity: Windows + so much bloat it starts attracting more bloat at an exponential rate until your hard disk collapses in on itself and then destroys the planet. Thanks a lot microsoft, way to go to kill us all.

[Sirocco @ Mar 5th 2008 7:26PM]

But I've been calling all the time I've "wasted" on my XP "research oriented". Therein lies the need to upgrade to Singularity. Oh Microsoft, you are so diabolical!

[bw @ Mar 5th 2008 9:06PM]

A new universe powered by microsoft, now that's a scary thought!

[ethana2 @ Mar 23rd 2008 6:27PM]

You think seeing a cat twice is bad?

Hello, your ____ is gone!