 <p>I don't think you really want to build your own operating system. There's already an operating system called <a href="http://www.reactos.org/" rel="nofollow">ReactOS</a> that's pretty much what you're looking to build.</p> <p>Just to reemphasize that creating an operating system isn't easy (especially one that runs Windows applications), ReactOS development started in 1998 and they're still in alpha stage.</p> <p>If you still want to have a crack at it, I would recommend having a look at <a href="http://wiki.osdev.org/Expanded_Main_Page" rel="nofollow">OSDev</a>, <a href="http://www.winehq.org/" rel="nofollow">Wine</a> source code and <a href="http://www.reactos.org/" rel="nofollow">ReactOS</a> source code.</p> <p>Have you considered perhaps making a minimalistic Linux distro that contains the minimum number of programs needed to start up Wine and the Windows application you need?</p>