[nequo]

> Dynamic linking served us when OS upgrades came infrequently, user software was almost never upgraded

Even today, dynamic linking is not only a security feature but also serves convenience. A security fix in OpenSSL or libwebp can be applied to everything that uses them by just updating those libraries instead of having to rebuild userland, with Firefox, Emacs, and so on.

[plopz]

Then why does every steam game need to install a different version of visual c++ redistributable?

[nequo]

Because they are not packaged by the distros so they are not guaranteed to have the libraries present that they were linked against? I am just guessing, I haven’t used Steam.

[YoshiRulz]

Does this happen on Windows too? The reason it happens on Linux is because every game ran via Proton/WINE gets its own virtual C: drive.