For example, in places where the a filesystem-related "standard" has changed, I have old static binaries that fail to start entirely, whereas the same-dated dynamic libraries just need to bother to actually install dependencies.
I am convinced that every argument in favor of static linking is because they don't know how to package-manager.
If you want a newer version, too bad - your OS doesn't ship that so better luck in the next release. OR you can set up a private repo, and either ship a binary that has the dependencies included (shipping half the userland with your audio player), or they package the newer version of library, which will unwittingly break half your system, if not today, then surely at the next distro upgrade.
It speaks volumes of Linux package management woes, that no vendor ships anything analogous to brew or chocolatey.
What is the gap between e.g. `apt` and Homebrew?
- Packages are useful units of software in homebrew, and both end-user apps dependency libraries in apt (and weird stuff, like headers, or dependencies)
- Homebrew packages are installed for the user, apt is system-wide
- Homebrew packages are updated and maintained usually by people involved with the software they are shipping, apt packages are usually maintained by the distro
- As a result, Homebrew packages almost always work and are almost always up to date, apt ones are almost never (stuff like go, node etc.)
Apt is like a weird frankenstein monster of npm, the system update, and an app store, and all that with a global scope.
Which would be a fair reason. People who like to build things might just not want to also learn how to package stuff.
If you're linking to libX11 or libgtk or something else that's common, rely on the distro providing it.
I really don't get all the anti-shared-library sentiment. I've been using and developing software for Linux for a good 25 years now, and yes, I've certainly had issues with library version mismatches, but a) they were never all that difficult to solve, and b) I think the last time I had an issue was more than a decade ago.
While I think my experience is probably fairly typical, I won't deny that others can have worse experiences than I do. But I'm still not convinced statically linking everything (or even a hybrid approach where static linking is more common) would be an overall improvement.