= About HelenOS = [[Image(htdocs:screenshot.png,512px,right,margin-left=30, margin-bottom=30, title="HelenOS features in a single screenshot")]] HelenOS is a portable microkernel-based multiserver operating system designed and implemented from scratch. It decomposes key operating system functionality such as file systems, networking, device drivers and graphical user interface into a collection of fine-grained user space components that interact with each other via message passing. A failure or crash of one does not directly harm others. HelenOS is therefore flexible, modular, extensible, fault tolerant and easy to understand. HelenOS does not aim to be a clone of an existing operating system or API and trades compatibility with legacy systems for cleaner design. Most of HelenOS components have been made to order especially for HelenOS so that its essential parts can stay free of adaptation and glue layers, franken-components and the maintenance burden incurred by them. HelenOS runs on eight different processor architectures and machines ranging from single-processor ARM embedded devices through multicore 32-bit and 64-bit desktop PCs to 64-bit Itanium and SPARC servers. HelenOS is open source / free software. Its source code is available under the [wiki:License BSD license]. Some third-party components are licensed under [wiki:License GPL]. {{{ #!html
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