How many problems would be eliminated if Sonar had a dedicated OS that was distributed with the product. You could have a dual boot option to launch Windows or Sonar. Sonar would have its own partition and an OS completely optimized for DAW operations.
 
Back in the 386 - 486 days, games came this way. When you ran them they took over the computer until you were finished.

Interesting. This isn't the first time I've heard this idea floated on this forum.

Except...drivers depend on Windows functionality, VSTs depend on Windows functionality, registration often requires internet connectivity so a browser/http support would need to be built in, video support leverages Microsoft's codec subsystem. And so on.

A DAW OS without significant proportions of Windows (or OS X similarly) would provide very limited functionality for software and hardware we already use and would want to use in the future. So it's not really viable.

KPerry
Except...drivers depend on Windows functionality, VSTs depend on Windows functionality, registration often requires internet connectivity so a browser/http support would need to be built in, video support leverages Microsoft's codec subsystem. And so on.

A DAW OS without significant proportions of Windows (or OS X similarly) would provide very limited functionality for software and hardware we already use and would want to use in the future. So it's not really viable.

I wonder though - with the sites focussing on Windows tweaks for DAWS - which are essentially guides to shutting down unwanted/unnecessary apps and processes - how far could you go? Could a standard Windows 8.1 (for example) be stripped down enough to make a significant improvement in performance for most users? In the worst case, a user could be dual-booting from his regular win8.1 to SONAR with its own (stripped) 8.1. For sure you could eliminate a ton of crud, but would the performance improvement warrant it? It would certainly allow standardization and would then help to eliminate performance problems currently experienced by users of unoptimized systems.

From a standard Win 8.1 installation I've tried running with as few services running as possible and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference to the way or speed or stability with which Sonar ran.

Outside of Sonar it didn't change DPC latency either.

Although I'm not a programmer and I like the idea of a dual-boot in theory, we really don't need the cycles at this point (unlike old 386/486 computers).  What we need is stability, which has less to do w/ the OS than how the OS works w/ your individual hardware.  So the best answer is a SONAR computer w/ a stripped down versions of Windows.  You can get Jim etc. to make you one of those, as much as you can afford, and they'll test your software integration, too.

Win8.1 runs well enough for me that I'm not inclined to dive into the world of tweaks.
 
As far as a dedicated DAW operating environment goes?  Well, there have been similar things done in the past that proved infeasible over the long haul.  X-Windows stations, p-machines, LISP machines, even java machines.
 
Being able to keep up with hardware is the challenge in niche markets like ours.  The only ones of the above that enjoyed any financial success were those in academic and military applications where taxpayers subsidized the cost.
 
From my perspective, we seem to be on an excellent trajectory for price/performance.  Think about how much more we're able to do today than we could 5 or even 3 years ago.  Imagine the next 3 to 5.
 
I haven't put pencil to paper on this, but I don't see any real ROI for the idea.

won't happen,  but you can get damn close (excluding sonar) with linux, e.g., http://www.studiotoolz.net/produce-music-on-linux/ there's some daw-optimised distros available

There was a similar *nix based post a day or two ago.  Looks really cool for all multimedia except audio because of driver support.  It's one I'll be watching

*nix is ok for email & internetty standard stuff but **** for games and none of my expensive vsts will work i gave some ardour-optimised distro a good thrashing 4 or 5 years ago, came back to windows...