In the olden days, it was common to have a boot disk that ran apps without an operating system. There were certain advantages to this, mainly eliminating DOS version compatibility, and getting slightly more resources without the OS overhead.
Is there a possible scenario like this for EOS as well?
ie, with the basic drivers etc + bootstrapping right ?
Are you thinking of a micro-kernel approach where the OS starts in the RAM & then runs only EOS ?
I think this should be possible with https://www.bootrino.com/ ... I was thinking of running my witness nodes in this mode. Though haven't tried.