Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stali: A new static Linux distribution

sta.li

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 233 posts

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#32

Post by saynsedit »

bitwize wrote: post #11
simophin wrote: post #3

I still don't understand why systemd sucks

Hating systemd is like hating Hillary Clinton at this point. It's well past time to suck it up and make peace with your next init system/President because the only viable alternative(s) are far worse.

American democracy: suck it up, you don't really have a choice.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#33

Post by arjun1296 »

JdeBP wrote: post #4
simophin wrote: post #3

I still don't understand why systemd sucks

sta tic li nux isn't really a reaction to systemd. What it is a reaction to is exemplified both by what the blurb on its WWW spends most of its time on, and indeed by its very name: dynamic linking. "Executing statically linked executables is much faster" ... "Statically linked executables are portable" ... "Statically linked executables use less disk space" ... "Statically linked executables consume less memory" --…

I refuse to believe that disk space is less as it can leverage other libraries in the deps list to load at run time and other can use it too.

For static executable the same dependent library will have to linked to all binaries. Maintenance is a pain in the neck.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#36

Post by viraptor »

mkj wrote: post #29

Is there any work on ASLR for quasi-static binaries? So you have no external linking (good for distribution and unsurprising dependencies), but still relocate at runtime.

In stali, or in general? For stali there's a slightly confusing FAQ entry: http://sta.li/faq / "Aren’t statically linked executables less secure?"

> it is simple to use position-independent code in static executables and (assuming a modern kernel that supports address randomization for executables) fully position-independent executables are easily created on all modern operating systems. [...] Thus we consider this as an issue with low impact and this is not a real focus for us.

So I don't know if they do it or not. If I read it correctly, they just ignore something they say is easy to do.

But in general, as mentioned, there's normally nothing that prevents you from compiling PIE C code even if you use -static.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#37

Post by jtietema »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #34
paulddraper wrote: post #28

I really like the idea of static linking. Then I think about how I'd patch the next inevitable openssl bug. Then I don't like it as much.

You'd run "pkg-manager upgrade", just like you do with dynamic linking.

Yep but now instead of fetching 1 updated library, you depend on everybody and their cat to rebuild their binaries and publish updated versions.
Post reply on HN