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Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

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Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#41

Post by ldng »

m463 wrote: post #18
HALtheWise wrote: post #7

This seems to "statically link" binaries in the sense that each program it ships with is a standalone binary. Does anyone know whether it's possible to truly statically link an entire Linux install, in the sense that the whole system is a single statically linked file including the kernel, display manager, web browser, etc so that link-time optimization can deduplicate code across the entire system?

> Does anyone know whether it's possible to truly statically link an entire Linux install I think if you give busybox enough time, it might happen. That's if systemd doesn't get there first, of course...

The answer is probably downvoted because of the systemd comment but I think that busybox is statically linkable, is it not ?

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#42

Post by dleslie »

HALtheWise wrote: post #7

This seems to "statically link" binaries in the sense that each program it ships with is a standalone binary. Does anyone know whether it's possible to truly statically link an entire Linux install, in the sense that the whole system is a single statically linked file including the kernel, display manager, web browser, etc so that link-time optimization can deduplicate code across the entire system?

You're asking for something similar to a Lisp machine, or perhaps even an Amiga. Everything runs in the same address space and has access to all available library functions; "processes", such as they are, are in no way isolated.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#43

Post by gameswithgo »

arendtio wrote: post #39
gameswithgo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses linux casually, I often experience pain when I download a program, try to run it, and it fails because some dependency is not installed or is not the right version. So you try to figure out how to install it and it in turn needs a couple of things. All of this works fine if whatever package manager your distro uses has the program you want, but the package managers don't have evertying! So I'd lov…

> So I'd love an ecosystem where things tend to be statically linked unless there is a good reason not to. Well, every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it. Which will use quite some resources. So to actually use this you would have to reinstall (nearly) all programs once a week or so (no matter if source or binary distribution…

>Well, every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it

Well no, I could opt not to apply the bug fix if it isn't affecting me. This again is sort of serve mentality, where of course you want to get a bug fix in as quick as possible in case it is a security issue. A desktop user, maybe you don't.

>After all, even nowadays application authors could provide static packages, but many don't do it.

Right, and really what I would like is for application authors to just static link more, more often, on linux. Or at the least ship their programs with installers that apply the needed deps if they are not already there! That the OS itself is statically linked doesn't really matter, but perhaps it would inspire an ecosystem that does this.

> I like Arch Linux best at the moment

Probably suggest arch linux to someone complaining about having to track down dependencies does not make sense, since such a person is more interested in the OS just working rather than making the OS a bit of a hobby that that they want to customize.

Which, is why I mostly use windows.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#44

Post by gameswithgo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #27
gameswithgo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses linux casually, I often experience pain when I download a program, try to run it, and it fails because some dependency is not installed or is not the right version. So you try to figure out how to install it and it in turn needs a couple of things. All of this works fine if whatever package manager your distro uses has the program you want, but the package managers don't have evertying! So I'd lov…

> So I'd love an ecosystem where things tend to be statically linked unless there is a good reason not to. Me too, but I'm not sure this project brings us closer to that goal. I don't need the base OS to be statically linked—in fact, that's where static vs dynamic linking matters least , because it all comes preinstalled. What I want is for everything else which I may want to install on top to be available as statica…

This is true, though perhaps there is some performance benefit.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#45

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #29
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason that there needs to be such extremes as either all statically linked or all dynamically linked. History has proven that dynamic linking causes a large number of headaches, and static linking has drawbacks as well. There is a reasonable middle ground: base system functionality that is utilized by most software (stdlib, cryptography, networking, gui, etc) should be dynamic and everything else should b…

> There is a reasonable middle ground: base system functionality that is utilized by most software (stdlib, cryptography, networking, gui, etc) should be dynamic and everything else should be static. But isn't this the exact opposite of what Oasis provides?

Oasis is just the opposite extreme of how most Linux distros work. That's interesting because no one else does it. I did not say it was the ideal.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#46

Post by retrac »

arendtio wrote: post #39
gameswithgo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses linux casually, I often experience pain when I download a program, try to run it, and it fails because some dependency is not installed or is not the right version. So you try to figure out how to install it and it in turn needs a couple of things. All of this works fine if whatever package manager your distro uses has the program you want, but the package managers don't have evertying! So I'd lov…

> So I'd love an ecosystem where things tend to be statically linked unless there is a good reason not to. Well, every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it. Which will use quite some resources. So to actually use this you would have to reinstall (nearly) all programs once a week or so (no matter if source or binary distribution…

> every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it

Back in the dark ages, some mainframe operating systems like MVS normally stored executables as object files, and would link the program every time you executed it.

Has the on-disk space savings and updateable libraries of dynamic linking, without most of the complexity. I believe the original motivation was to allow an executable to run at an arbitrary address on systems without virtual memory though.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#47

Post by cestith »

Subsentient wrote: post #13

Honestly, I'm team dynamic linking. I prefer to have things clearly separated in functionality and easily upgradeable. Statically linking all the OS utilities to their dependency libraries, over and over again? Dear god that sounds awful.

For a system I'm going to keep and use in multiple ways, dynamic linking is wonderful. Save time building and upgrading, and save memory using the various apps.

For a base image for VMs or containers I'm going to build automatically and throw away on demand anyway, a slightly longer build time to statically link things won't hurt. The memory utilization penalty should also be small, because those should only be running one application or a couple at most.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#48

Post by cestith »

abainbridge wrote: post #28
Subsentient wrote: post #13

Honestly, I'm team dynamic linking. I prefer to have things clearly separated in functionality and easily upgradeable. Statically linking all the OS utilities to their dependency libraries, over and over again? Dear god that sounds awful.

> I prefer to have things clearly separated in functionality and easily upgradeable. What is your thinking here? Are you talking about a use case where you have an application that uses a library and a bug fix is issued for that library, so you want to just get the new .so for the library and have the application use it? That feels like a niche use case to me. Maybe there is another benefit, or this use case is more…

That is not at al a niche use case, at least on a general-purpose system. Shared libraries on Linux, like most modern OSes, are also shared in resident memory among programs using them. For very common libraries like TLS, readline, or GTK that can be a big savings.

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#49

Post by 1996 »

retrac wrote: post #46
arendtio wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I'd love an ecosystem where things tend to be statically linked unless there is a good reason not to. Well, every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it. Which will use quite some resources. So to actually use this you would have to reinstall (nearly) all programs once a week or so (no matter if source or binary distribution…

> every time there is a bug fix in one of your dependencies you/your distribution would have to recompile everything that depends on it Back in the dark ages, some mainframe operating systems like MVS normally stored executables as object files, and would link the program every time you executed it. Has the on-disk space savings and updateable libraries of dynamic linking, without most of the complexity. I believe th…

I would be surprised if there was not a way to take a dynamic executable, "add in" all the required libraries, and return a fat static executable

Re: Oasis: a small statically-linked Linux system

#50

Post by bityard »

abainbridge wrote: post #28
Subsentient wrote: post #13

Honestly, I'm team dynamic linking. I prefer to have things clearly separated in functionality and easily upgradeable. Statically linking all the OS utilities to their dependency libraries, over and over again? Dear god that sounds awful.

> I prefer to have things clearly separated in functionality and easily upgradeable. What is your thinking here? Are you talking about a use case where you have an application that uses a library and a bug fix is issued for that library, so you want to just get the new .so for the library and have the application use it? That feels like a niche use case to me. Maybe there is another benefit, or this use case is more…

> That feels like a niche use case to me.

I wouldn't call it a niche use case at all, it's exactly how the software for all major Linux and BSD operating systems are packaged and built.

For example, when (not if) a vulnerability is found in OpenSSL, package maintainers just commit an update to the openssl package and users only have to download and install one package to patch their system against the vulnerability.

Contrast with a fully-static OS and applications: the maintainers would have to update the openssl package, rebuild it, and then also rebuild _every single other program_ that relies on it as well. On my system, that's 123 packages. I don't have all of those installed, but as a user, it means I would have to download new full copies of around a dozen packages to patch one flaw in one package.

And of course, the packages themselves are much _much_ larger too. Most software that I can install as a flatpack or appimage are at least an order of magnitude larger than the deb version, take longer to start, and also take up more valuable RAM when running.

Proponents of static linking have generally experienced the pain of dynamically-linked software either through container deployment or by accidentally messing up their system with third-party packages and repos and the like. I get it, I have been there too. But even through managing a dynamically linked system is certainly more complex, it brings a lot of benefits to the table.

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