IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE FOR LINUX TO BE AS BAD AS WINDOWS

My experience with Windows vs Linux is similar: Every time I reinstall Windows, I am left with a non-functional system: 640x480, 8-bit color display, no sound, no networking-- keyboard, mouse, and monitor ONLY. The drivers must all be backed up on the Linux system, which never needs reinstalling. I then get to spend 6 hours installing each driver one at a time, then rebooting. Sometimes, something goes wrong with the installation of a driver, and as a result, Windows refuses to recognize the device. Sometimes, Windows must be reinstalled a second time. Linux works the first time you install it, and it doesn't ever need to be reinstalled.

The disparity between Windows and Linux is even greater when you actually start USING the two systems-- Windows needs to be debugged on a regular basis, and there are no tools whatsoever to help you figure out what's going on. You don't even usually have the benefit of an error message more detailed than "An error occurred while trying to do what the user asked."

What would it take to make Linux as f***ed up as Windows is?

Removing most of the information inproc would be a good start. You could also make the library call "strerror" always produce the error message "An error occurred."

But that wouldn't be sufficient. I wanna see Linux need rebooting and reinstalling. A bunch of configuration options could be moved directly into the kernel. To change them, you would use a simple application that modifies the kernel image. Rebooting would be required for the changes to take effect. Anything short of that, and it would be possible to avoid rebooting.

But even that wouldn't make Linux as f***ed up as Windows. I wanna see complete system reinstallation. Windows usually needs reinstallation when driver settings get way out of touch with reality. This could be achieved with the same application that allows us to make the system require rebooting occasionally. If we disallow direct editing of the configuration data, and we put bugs in the application that indirectly allows us to edit the data, the data will eventually become corrupt, and there will be no way to fix it. If several undocumented magic sectors were used to store the data in addition to the kernel image, reinstallation of the entire OS would be the only way to fix it.

But even THAT wouldn't make Linux as f***ed up as Windows. I wanna see self-installing viruses that are totally invisible. One thing that Linux lacks in this regard is an equivalent to the RUNDLL program. In conjunction with removing command-line information fromproc, a RUNDLL-type program can allow a malicious program to pose as a legitamate one (namely, RUNDLL). It should be called "dlrun", being named after the "dlopen" library call.

But even THAT wouldn't make Linux as f***ed up as Windows. I wanna see the desktop environment using 99% of the CPU, the way explorer.exe does on occasion, for no apparent reason. But what would it do with all that CPU time? How about calculate as many decimal places as possible of PI? Or, it could try to factor the largest number it hasn't factored yet. Or it could search all user mailboxes for suspicious keywords to send to the CIA.

But I wanna see programs "not responding" every time I use the computer. For that, we can add a few infinite loops to the C library. They would be triggered by logic plants.

But I also wanna see programs that stop responding and then cannot be end. Linux already has something called "uninterruptible sleep," so all we'd need to do is occasionally make a random process go into PERMANENT uninterruptible sleep (the current implementation of uninterruptible sleep tends to be frustratingly temporary). This would also cause the system to freeze up on occasion, like Windows does, when the X server gets chosen for permanent uninterruptible sleep. The 'xkill' program needs to be abolished, because I want these programs to leave a window behind that cannot be closed.

I still haven't thought of a way for those Linux reinstalls to result in a system where nothing but the keyboard, mouse, and monitor work, and where attempts to make other hardware work may result in the need to do another reinstall.