&gt; I&#x27;m a gentoo user and before preserved libs came in, updates to libpng required recompilation of almost everything on a system.<p>I&#x27;m also a Gentoo user. (Hi! :D )<p>ISTR that preserved-libs &quot;just&quot; lets you delay recompilation of affected packages [0] by keeping the old libs around until everything that needs rebuilding to link against the new version has been rebuilt. You <i>still</i> need to rebuild packages. Am I wrong about that?<p>[0] Or, -alternatively- &quot;just&quot; lets you keep your system working while you rebuild affected packages.