That sounds a lot like the issues some Linux distros are running into, where they expect to be able to ship one single blessed pre-compiled version of every lib

That sounds a lot like the issues some Linux distros are running into, where they expect to be able to ship one single blessed pre-compiled version of every library, and have each app load it dynamically at runtime. But that's just not how Rust works: it's trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and it isn't Cargo's fault that you have trouble with it.