So far as a) goes, VMS also got this right, in addition to AmigaOS, in a somewhat similar fashion IIRC.

b) on your list is, I think, best handled in current linux distros by gobolinux. They toss out the normal unix directory structure in favor of old-school DOS like one-program a dir type system. I keep meaning to try it out, but am hooked on Ubuntu lately; perhaps when I get Xen setup I'll give it a whirl in a VM!

c) see b) !

d) ksh (real ksh, NOT pdksh) has much better extensibility, in fact it has hooks so you can add syntax!! It's now open source from att labs, so check it out if you want a better shell for scripting. I'm not sure how the default ksh set is for interactive use, I know that it can be turned into bash-equivalent friendliness for interactive use, but the vendors who've used it (Sun, IBM, I mean you!) have had really shitting interactive defaults for it. Not sure about the mothership att distro though. Apple shocked me by having a sane tcsh interactive environment for Terminal!

e) say it, brother!

f) I keep meaning to redo init in a capability-secure variant of Scheme!

g) yes, they do suck, no?

h) I'm in favor of static linking, along with placing things all in one dir like gobolinux does. Or at least stashing your dynamic libraries under your own dir hierarchy like you do in gobolinux (or apples Libraries/ dirs)

Cheers!

-djm