HandOS is a Linux® based OS for tablets and the likes.

But it is not another Linux distro like Slackware,Debian or Ubuntu.Rather,all applications run on the Hand Java Virtual Machine,which execute Hand bytecode.It does not support the Java SE libraries;only some of the classes are there.It is the standard to write programs in Java,but using the Java Native Interface(JNI),you can write code in C/C++ also and call that code from Java.But even when you program in C/C++,you don’t use the system calls provided by the Linux kernel;you use the functions provide by the HandOS Application Shell,which is a part of the HandOS System Services.

The HandOS runtime is the Hand Java Virtual Machine and the HandOS System Services.All applications run on this,and most of the Java functions do a JNI call to a HandOS Application Shell.