Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by muth02446 163 days ago
Wasn't there also DLL hell on Windows?

My understanding is that very old statically linked Linux images still run today because paraphrasing Linus: "we don't break user space".

2 comments

> we don't break user space

The kernel doesn't break user space. User space breaks on its own.

Unfortunately you can't really statically link a GUI app.

Also, if you happened to have linked that image to a.out it wouldn't work if you're using a kernel from this year, but that's probably not the case ;)

> Unfortunately you can't really statically link a GUI app.

But is there any fundamental reason why not?

> Also, if you happened to have linked that image to a.out it wouldn't work if > you're using a kernel from this year, but that's probably not the case ;)

I assume you refer to the retirement of coff support (in favor of elf). I would argue that given how long this obsolete format was supported was actually quite impressive.