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You wonder how much sysadmin effort would be saved if they didn't have to deal with shared libraries between packages. Is it a case of the sysadmin practices not keeping up with the current abundance of disk space/ram or is there still a case for the efficiencies of the shared library model?

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The shared library model ensures (at least for C/C++) that if a bug has been found and fixed in certain library, all packages that depend on it will take advantage of that bug fix. Imagine how many packages would need a rebuild if let's say the openssl package has been updated by the vendor and openssl has been linked statically into applicatons. Using the shared library model eliminates the need for rebuilding all packages that depend on a given library, if the given library has been updated.

Shared libraries can also make more efficient use of RAM and sometimes even of cache RAM. Every time you don't have to move something to where you want it because it's already there, you get a speed win.

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