Design flaws in third party operating systems
(which should not find their way into pOS :) )
11/04/02

1.
  Some processes may not be killed as they are
  using certain devices or system resources
  and will block the whole system when they
  crash
  - found in Windows all versions >= 4.x
  - processes must always be able to be
    killed, if necessary the system should
    reset the appropiate hardware/resource

2.
  When a hardware resource is being accessed
  but not responding immediately, it locks up
  all programs trying to access it
  - found in Windows all versions >= 4.x
  - the driver-api must restrict access
    to hardware resources which are not
    ready (all drivers must have a ready
    status flag/byte-> we must introduce
    error messages for interaction of
    driver-api and driver), also consider
    using semaphores

3.
  When trying to copy files to a target which
  cannot hold the source files due to insufficient
  free space, the operating system/file browser will
  notice it at the point where some files have been
  copied already and the target is finally full
  - found in Windows all versions >= 4.x, probably Linux also
  - the file browser/operating system should check
    the target for sufficient free space to hold
    all the files

4.
  Many operating systems have too many parameters to
  be configured which can easily confuse the user
  - found in both Windows (>= 4.x) and Linux
  - the operating system should be able to
    determine most custom parameters automatically,
    the configuration files should be stripped
    down to settings desired to be customizable
    (eg: host-name, text-color)

5.
  Alot of operating systems come with too much
  software which is needed by the operating
  system and restrict the user in it's freedom
  of choice regarding the software
  - found in Linux and Windows
  - the operating system should only consist
    of a operating system core, a system
    c-library and an initialization program
    (ie: init) which can be replaced by
    any other program desired to be run
    on startup

6.
  The operating system allows a process to load
  a large file into memory though the physical
  memory is insufficient to hold it
  - found in Windows (app: eg: Wordpad)
  - pOS only tried to load data into memory
    after it's been successful in allocating
    the required amount of memory

7. Windows Operating Systems abort copying multiple
   files when it could not copy one or more files.
   pOS (or better it's shell) should prompt the user
   if he wants to continue or abort copying, after
   the copy process it should display the files
   the shell was not able to copy. (And display
   the files been copied (like the AmigaOS CLI :)).