> If you compile all GUI apps statically, you'll end up with a monstorous distro that takes hundreds of gigabytes of disk space

And yet the original Macintosh toolbox was 64 kilobytes. Black and white though, and no themes out of the box.

Even a 1MB GUI library (enough for a full Smalltalk-80, or perhaps a compact modern GUI) would be in the noise for most apps.