Zero-OS is a lightweight and efficient operating system. There is no shell, local nor remote. It supports a small number of primitives; the low-level functions it could perform natively in the operating system. Zero-OS (ZOS) is the operating system which allows the TFNodes to be used to provide IT capacity in all safety to its applications. ZOS has been developed by ThreeFold from scratch, starting from the Linux kernel with the purpose to improve on efficiency, energy usage, performance, scale, cost of management and security. All applications, twins and blockchains are secured by the Zero-OS operating system.
Most centrally managed operating systems rely on human management and intervention, which leads to downtime and security issues.
Since the creation of the Internet, the development of operating systems mostly arises through the addition of further layers of code to improve capabilities and functionalities of software, this leads to too much complexity, performance loss, and energy usage issues.
To build a truly scalable, private and efficient Internet infrastructure, we had to start from scratch to ensure a minimal hacking surface, improve efficiency, and ensure that anyone who connects hardware to the ThreeFold Grid wouldn’t be able to access the private user data thanks to our Quantum Safe Storage System.
The result is game-changing as ZOS is able to provide the following benefits:
* Stateless: without shell, local or remote, it does not allow for inbound network connections to happen nor can data be fetched by node operators.
* Lightweight: Zero-OS can save up-to 10X energy on storage workloads.
* Autonomous: it runs by itself and doesn’t require humans to maintain it, removing human error and considerably reducing the hacking surface.
* Decentralized: deploy IT workloads and infrastructures in a private and neutral environment.
* Secure: store workloads in a quantum safe (future proof) way.
* Private: communicate end-to-end without centralized servers or APIs in the middle.
* Compatible: run anything that can run on Linux but in a decentralized environment.
Imagine an operating system with the following benefits
* Upto 10x more efficient for certain workloads (e.g. storage)
* No installation required
* All files are deduplicated for the VM’s, containers and the ZOS itself, no more data duplicated filesystems
* The hacking footprint is super small, which leads to much more safe systems
* Every file is fingerprinted and gets checked at launch time of an application
* There is no shell or server interface on the operating system
* The networks are end2end encrypted between all Nodes
* There is the possibility to completely disconnect the compute/storage from the network service part which means hackers have a lot less chance to get to the data.
* A smart contract for IT layer allows groups of people to deploy IT workloads with concensus and full control
* All workloads which can run on linux, can run on Zero-OS but in a much more controlled, private and safe way
More info see [https://library.threefold.me/info/threefold#/technology/zos](https://library.threefold.me/info/threefold#/technology/zos)
