The problem I have in practice is images are so often lacking, or they start you off with an alien universe full of preconceptions rather than just a collection of tools. This isn't an inherent problem, but it seems to show up half the time or more.
I want to like images, but I think what I really want is a system that has a fully functional base state with a good image that can be (and usually is) loaded at startup. I guess that might get in your way if you're worried about optimal performance.
Well, I'd like to explore a link-phase to build images. I think that'd be really quite interesting and might break up the monolith and mix Smalltalk ideas in with Unix as they ought to have.
