> The problem is that they fail to recognize that there are potentially cases where even though it is a bad thing, it is still the least-bad option You are way

> The problem is that they fail to recognize that there are potentially cases where even though it is a bad thing, it is still the least-bad option You are way oversimplifying the problem. Linux designers want a nice, stable OS with good performance. Introducing a new mode where signals can asynchronously interrupt a task means that you have to account for your kernel code to not only be safe when CPU interrupts occur, but now when user space signal handlers execute too. To be safe means that you'd need to sprinkle fences/barriers over lots of code. This flushes pipelines and unnecessarily forfeits performance. Performance aside, it's really hard to imagine the problems caused by asynchronous interrupts until they actually occur. As a designer, it's much simpler to just bar them for the critical region. Now, it's totally reasonable for us to discuss 'hey can we minimize these critical regions somehow, to make these problems less likely?' If you did a `kill -9 1234` and then your computer suddenly hit an NMI, whose bug would that be? The kernel's! You'd say "hey, kernel, wtf, I was just trying to reap this process and then my computer rebooted." And you'd be right. There's lots of design decisions made early on in linux that are likely baked in and hard to change without impacting user space. For you to declare it "the least-bad option" you have to be able to evaluate it from the designer's perspective. From the user's perspective, I agree that it's clearly not ideal. But there's much more at stake here. > idea among developers out there that the computer belongs to them and users are beneath them You're introducing some motives that just aren't there. Linux is all about enabling people. Perhaps we can agree that the death of general purpose computing is nigh [1], but it's not linux's fault. >> You're free to design your own operating system without this limitation > Such an OSS response to criticism. This attitude is awful I don't agree. But I will express regret that I didn't say instead "you're free to use another OS without this limitation" -- that's a more realistic option for a user. For a user to casually say "you made the wrong design decision here" without acknowledging the existence of the tradeoff is unfair. [1] https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html