Stali distribution smashes assumptions about Linux

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2022-01-14 04:00:09

By Serdar Yegulalp , Senior Writer, InfoWorld |

The first public version of Stali, a Linux distribution built to be as fast and small as possible, has been released after several years of work. This first release of the entire Stali OS fits into a 34MB ISO.

Stali stands for static Linux, with "static" referring to how all binaries in the distribution are built statically against their libraries. Any routines in the library required by the binary are copied directly into the binary itself, instead of being linked to a shared copy of the library used by multiple programs.

Stali's project head, Anselm R. Garbe (a developer currently working at BMW, and creator of the DWM window manager), believes static linking works out better for most common use cases. The most obvious benefit is that static binaries have a smaller memory and on-disk footprint. Static binaries also claim to be faster, although there are no benchmarks as yet to show how Stali performs against other distributions.