Operating Systems Utopia: Alternative, Academic Systems and the System of the Future

My background with and enthusiasm for free and open source operating systems started when, back in college here and then here, I needed to use a computer and there's only MS-DOS (and its GUI for your personal confuser, Windows) together with its quirks and virus bandwagon, not to mention the agony of inconvenience they bring. As I mentioned in my previous article, I learned to program computer viruses and realized there's no creative, social or educational benefit from it. Frustrated, I pined for the day I can have an operating environment that's impervious to computer viruses, can run multiple applications, is free (haven't yet imagined it's source code is also accessible) and most importantly, shouldn't crash (at least compared to DOS and Windows that pulls this stunt on a regular basis).