In general, techniques are described for organizing execution of distributed operating systems for network devices. A device comprising hardware computing nodes may be configured to perform the techniques. The hardware computing nodes may execute a protocol by which to discover a topology of the plurality of hardware computing nodes, and determine, based on the topology, a subset of the plurality of hardware computing nodes to manage execution of a distributed operating system. The determined subset of the plurality of hardware computing nodes may execute a communication bus by which to synchronize operating system state information between the subset of the plurality of hardware computing nodes. The hardware computing nodes may further execute, based on the operating system state information, the distributed operating system to provide an execution environment in which one or more applications execute.