Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by marcosdumay 747 days ago
That's the problem. I don't know.

I've made up half a dozen definitions for it before asking, and none of them were a good guide to decide about the software on my machine. Yours seems to focus on the DE components, what is both way too restrictive (why are `ls` or `test` out?) and way too inclusive (my DE installs with an Earth rendering and graphic calculator, my workplace's DE installs with CandyCrush).
1 comments
vundercind 747 days ago
A universal definition isn’t needed to apply the concept, in the same way the Internet can’t agree on some fixed universal definition for what a sandwich is, yet this doesn’t impair assembling a BLT.

It is in fact applied by organizations, and they manage fine, so lack of a universal definition isn’t a hindrance.

If you want to guarantee certain versions of ls or test are available for the duration of the supported life of an OS, yeah, they’re part of the base system. This kind of arrangement is very nice for both users and software vendors. The base-system instability of an Arch or a Gentoo (rolling release), or the ancient productivity-software packages of a Debian, aren’t the only options—lockstep-release stable base system and rolling release user packages are an option.

link