Name: Slax OS Family: Linux Developer: Tomas Matejicek Licence: GPL

This is the best tiny distribution I've ever found for new Linux users; it's easy to use with a potent desktop environment (KDE 3.5) and with Linux kernel 2.6 that offers a good support of different hardware (USB, wifi…etc).

Based on the Slackware distribution, Slax is can be run from a small minidisk (or even from a bootable USB); its standard version has nearly a 190 MB size, this let me make a copy of it I always have in my pocket when I go to university :)

Slax does not pretend so much in matter of requirements, to run the Xwindow window manager (with KDE) you will need 144 MB of RAM memory, your processor will be good for sure (minimal i486 Pentium or AMD needed).

Slax comes in different editions: Standard, KillBill (that I have), Server and Popcorn. KillBill contains qemu and wine, Popcorn is only 128 MB (good if your flash is of this size).

Another characteristic of Slax is its modularity, modules for Slax can be easily added and you can find thousands of them on the web.

Official Site of Slax is here

Yesterday, Dr. Basel Mahafzah, our Computer Architecture instructor showed us a short video of a 3D operating system (or more technically, a desktop environment for MS Windows and SunOs), and told us it was developed by a group of students for the OS class in their university.
The project's name is Project Looking Glass, it was developed almost in Java and it's large supported by Sun Microsystems, the whole code is open source with a GNU General Public License (GPL) license. After the short installation, you'll be able to move and rotate windows as if they were sheets of paper (or more precisely, as if they're made of glass), you can even write on the back of any window!

The fact is: why students from Techno do not develop such things? They never thought of taking up similar projects…and this is in some way strange, since we have –technically- the needed abilities and knowledge…we need only will!

One of major things I hate in my university is the fixation of students and instructors to only one thing: marks, so here it's an endless action-reaction between poor students, which study to get decent marks, and between psychopathic (!) instructors trying to make exams even more difficult. We have as result large numbers of students who have very little time for, or don't wish to carry up, something out of the ordinary. In this way, we have killed any form of creativity…

To download the video, click here.
To download the project, visit this page.

(PS: Me and my friend Nasser have thought of making something similar, perhaps for graduation project… and don't steal our idea!)