Also, at the OS level, there are entire projects built around just understanding the dependencies in the Operating System and applying minimalism to try and get

Also, at the OS level, there are entire projects built around just understanding the dependencies in the Operating System and applying minimalism to try and get to a state of (relatively) simple, known dependencies. One of my favorites is Rob Landley's Aboriginal Linux: http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html I highly recommend his blogs if you're interested.