Except fields in a database are not arbitrary. I'd much rather configure Apache by inserting fields in a database (and tooling can be developed to help) than e

Except fields in a database are not arbitrary. I'd much rather configure Apache by inserting fields in a database (and tooling can be developed to help) than editing ascii files in its custom configuration language. You could configure the entire system with a bunch of queries. You could view the state of the system with queries so easily in a universal manner. "select server_name from nginx.sites where enabled = true;" This is fundamentally different from the model that we have today. Right now there's no good safe way of querying for the true state of things. You have to parse a bunch of crap and even then you wont know for sure if the value in the file is actually the present value or not unless the specific technology allows for that to be queried. Tons of different methods of including and overriding and so on. Knowing what's the "effective state" is difficult. "select pid, owner, memory_usage from os.processes order by memory_usage desc limit 10;" Those are just some basic examples and I know it's not that easy to pull off but I think it's certainly worth thinking about and challenging the popular Unix-isms of arbitrary information stuffed in arbitrary formats in arbitrary places held together by a thing string of conventions. It adds so much cost and room for bugs and errors because of the countless boundaries that it creates between each little component (constant parse, spit out write read) meaning and context and structure is lost in each step. An operating system with a structured state backend could bring harmony to all the components.