Ok, you have no idea what you're talking about. > Interestingly most apps that depend on Qt, WebKit or ICU include their own copies of this libraries. So you'r

Ok, you have no idea what you're talking about. > Interestingly most apps that depend on Qt, WebKit or ICU include their own copies of this libraries. So you're not a Linux user, ok. In that case there really are not that much shared libraries. Using a free desktop means that a large majority of all programs you use requires the same set of shared libraries. And as least in KDE and Gnome, there is a large number of small programs running in the background. > I can't help but feel that when you have systems with 4,000 binaries in your PATH, something has gone terribly wrong. A quick "ls /usr/bin | wc -l" gives me 3135. Considering this is not the whole PATH, I think 4000 is a normal number. In Linux distributions, programs don't have to ship their own versions of anything. Maybe you should try it.