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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Are there any Linux distros that actually distribute (most) software as (mostly) static binaries? Right now, the only way to do it seems to be compiling everything myself...

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I think there are only experiments. From what I know Oasis Linux is furthest along https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis

Another resources is https://sta.li/ I thought there was a Archlinux-based attempt, but can't find references to that.

https://sta.li/ Experimental, probably not that usable.

http://sabo.xyz/ More of a complete distro, but the dev himself says he still uses a couple of programs dynamically linked.

Why would you want that?

Simplicity. If everything is statically linked, then updating package A can never break package B.

As I see it, the entire world of Docker containers exists primarily to solve the problem that static linking already solved.

Something like Nix would work as well, and I think I would love Nix if I knew how to use it. But I don't, and I don't really have the time to learn.

AppImage, Flatpack, Snaps... all seem to be largely reinventing the primary qualities, good and bad, of static binaries in a new and much more complicated form.

At least a container provides more function than mere bundling, but a lot of containers actually get used merely for bundling.

I don't think that makes a lot of sense in a distro. If package A gets an update, it means a sufficiently bad bug was discovered in it. If it happens to be a library, you want to make sure you update every package B that uses it. Which, conveniently, the distro solves for you too.

This is true, but only if I'm actually getting everything from the distro repository and I'm able to keep all of it on the latest version. In practice, I sadly tend to run into situations where I need stuff from other places.

But then you don't want the software from the distro to be statically linked, but the software from other places. In which case it doesn't matter that much what does the distro do.

Basically, the distros aren't perfect and I sometimes run into conflicts. Also, with static binaries it would be much easier to pin specific software at old versions without affecting anything else, even just temporarily for testing.

IMO, when stuff is self-contained, everything becomes easier! This isn't to say some stuff like OpenGL can't be dynamically linked, but some day I'd love to use a distro with a static-first approach, because right now it simply isn't an option.

I think programs in /bin used to be usually statically linked. When updating the glibc for instance, this makes the change far more doable. In general dealing with static binaries is much less pain, especially when they haven't been compiled locally/by the distributor for this particular version of the distribution.

/sbin used to be statically linked on unix. The entire point of /sbin is the independence from almost everything else so that you can rely on them even when the system boots up in a weird state.

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