The 2K distributed operating system (OS) seeks to modify the way traditional systems interact with application software, to accommodate different service requirements and dynamic changes in rapidly evolving, heterogeneous environments. By maintaining an explicit representation of the dependencies between system and application components, the OS infrastructure can better configure the system (optimizing its performance) and recognize the need for reconfiguration. It can know how to carry out this (re)configuration without compromising system stability, performance, and reliability. High-level 2K systems are built atop a dynamically configurable CORBA ORB named dynamicTAO. The system exports a homogeneous view to its users and can be run on extant OSs (Linux, Solaris, Windows, ...), and on the specialized Off++ microkernel.