Unfortunately we can't do PIE executables for Linux yet

[illwieckz]

Because of a bug in mimetype database, PIE executables were recognized as shared libraries by mistake and then Linux file managers (whatever the desktop) were not able to run them. When user clicked on them, they got a message saying the system does not know how to open shared libraries. 😱

See freedesktop.org/xdg/shared-mime-info#11 for the related issue. 👀

This issue was only fixed this year (see freedesktop.org/xdg/shared-mime-info!81).

So we have to wait current stable releases of major distros shipping that mime fix before shipping PIE binaries, either by waiting for the next LTS, either by them backporting it.

So, for example, the day an Ubuntu LTS and a Debian stable ships the fix, we can think about starting distributing PIE executables. Before that day, it's better if we can ship non-PIE binaries if that's possible. 😢

Otherwise Linux users would have to open a terminal, go to the download dir, run the updater by hand… If we are worrying about the executable bit enough to ship the binary in a zip to avoid asking users to flip the bit in the file properties after download, we can't really expect the user to run a console and so on… 🙄

[slipher]

#87 is disabling PIE for now.