That's dynamically loaded, try it with the runtime $ gcc hello.c $ ls -l a.out -rwxr-xr-x 1 maht maht 4511 Oct 11 16:38 a.out $ gcc --static he

That's dynamically loaded, try it with the runtime $ gcc hello.c $ ls -l a.out -rwxr-xr-x 1 maht maht 4511 Oct 11 16:38 a.out $ gcc --static hello.c $ ls -l a.out -rwxr-xr-x 1 maht maht 574106 Oct 11 16:38 a.out