Ksplice is fine and all, but my operating system is my web browser, or Emacs, or barnowl, etc., and I hate having to shut them down to install a userland software update.
A radical solution is to discourage or forbid persistent applications. All programs merely provide a one-shot function. There may be one persistent application which handles UI in a universal way (tree based? command line?).
Any program which needs to store state must explicitly serialize it out to disk, and read it back in when the program is next run. A program may be painlessly upgraded between runs. This paradigm of programs only performing a single task may encourage an ecosystem where programs work together, as well as lower the barrier to entry to modifying and extending an open-source program.
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