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Linking-it-all-together asks: I came across this article about the benefits of static linking over dynamic linking. If dynamic linking is slower and doesn't offer practical benefits then why do most distros still dynamic link? Is this a hold over from the past or is there a reason I'm missing that make distros still use dynamic linking?
DistroWatch answers: I read through the article provided and it does share some interesting statistics on dynamically linked programs versus statically linked programs. The author appears to be making a case against dynamic linking and in favour of static linking, or at least presenting facts which would support such a case. For the sake of this discussion I am going to assume the observations the article's author makes are accurate and factually correct, at least for their own distribution.
The author addresses some interesting questions, such as how often are dynamically libraries used on the system, which indicates how many resources avoid duplication by sharing libraries. They also explore how quickly dynamic and static programs load and how much larger statically linked programs are compared to their dynamically linked counterparts. The author points out that many libraries on their distribution are not shared by many programs, that statically linked programs can load faster, and that not a lot of bandwidth is saved by using dynamically linked programs.
Reading through the page of observations the author shares, it's understandable we might wonder why developers continue to favour dynamically linked applications in most situations. Let's look at some of the specific arguments from the article.