[schmonz]

If you think OS X's approach has done away with it, you're wrong. Maybe you've found it a worthwhile tradeoff, but flattening each application's dependency tree is still a tradeoff: you get truly independent applications, but you pay for it in duplication, the costs of which are well enumerated in binarycrusader's post. Maybe you mostly don't encounter those costs. Maybe you even believe most people mostly don't encounter those costs. But they do exist.

[JoshTriplett]

Exactly. The "self-contained" approach means I can't just upgrade a library once and have everything using it Just Work with the features enabled (or bugs fixed) by the new version.

[marssaxman]

It's not going to just work all the time. There are so many possible libraries and possible versions of those libraries and their sub-libraries that it is possible, even likely, that nobody in the world has ever tested that precise combination of components before. You don't know whether it's going to work until you try it, and when it doesn't work, it's up to you to figure out what went wrong and fix it. This seems like a monumental waste of time. I would rather use a complete, monolithic application built and tested by the app developer, leave it the way it came, and upgrade it when the app developer has a new, complete, built, and tested version I can use.

[JoshTriplett]

Personally, I'd prefer a library version tested by a huge number of people running a given distribution than one tested only by the developer of a single package.

[brigade]

And the opposite approach means I only need to update glibc once and flash audio is broken.