Unfortunately, static linking is definitely not manageable nowadays. I gave it a try a few years back, and had a really bad time getting the compiler to behave as I would (gcc is a bitch here, really).

I do agree though that all the new "packaging methods" are really badly done, as you end up with devs shipping their own library versions along with the packages, and you are then dependent on them to push new snaps/flatpack/titi/kaka/whatever when a new patch is needed.
I guess they finally managed to port DLL hell to Linux. This is our future now.