Joanna Rutkowska, a security researcher known for her work on virtualization security and low-level rootkits, has released a new open-source operating system meant to provide isolation of the OS s components for better security. The OS, called Qubes, is based on Xen, X and Linux and is in a basic, alpha stage right now. Qubes uses virtualization technology to separate applications running on the OS and also places many of the system-level components in sandboxes to prevent them affecting each other.
Source: https://threatpost.com/researcher-releases-qubes-hardened-os-040710/73793/