But I sympathize with the author, who apparently wants games and feels stuck with Windoze. Maybe run the games in a VM? If they will run fast enough…

As for Linus’ comment, Linux is not that much better anymore on the ‘install’ score. It is maddening how much of Linux has to be managed with a package manager that ‘automagically’ gets all the dependent packages, etc. It misses the point and weakens Linux as a platform.

Once upon a time DLL’s (shared objects) made a little sense, but with today’s memory and storage costs, the benefits are not compelling, and the downside of stuff breaking because of other stuff is unaceptable.

The Java world mostly gets this right: you can use an existing JVM or bundle one with your application. Many Java applications simply unzip and run, and leave no trace when you remove them.

As God intended.

This post was not on the OS though, rather on third party vendors who think they can screw your system if they please. But you still have a point, since something like 95% of Windows software is written by people who think they own your system (including Apple, Sun, Google and just about everybody in between).