Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sophacles 4420 days ago
It's been standard for longer than I've been alive to overload $OS_NAME to mean all of the following:

kernel

kernel + default userland

Kernel + default userland + kernel vendor add-ons

kernel + default userland + kernel vendor add-ons + ecosystem software

Also, since linux gained traction OS can frequently be interchanged with distribution of a kernel + userland + packaging tools + software repository + ecosystem, in various ways, and as above.

Not sure why you decided that OSX means strictly:

kernel + default userland

1 comments

Fair point, it's just how I interpreted it, others may read that differently.

I was just focused on the "missing" term, to me that implies something that was once there or is notable in it's absence. However, as with many of the things that describe themselves in this way, that is not the case.

In this particular case, HTTP clients for the OSX ecosystem are not missing, they're just not that great.

In general I just dislike the wording.