Should we unpack these statements though?

How much of linux isn't about cgroups and namespaces? Docker I believe needs about a 100 system calls to get containers to work. How much of the tree could you shake and still have containers work? Would you still call the host Linux, or something else? And what would that system do for Windows and OS X users? Anything?

Could you maintain this 'something else' as a permanent fork, a la Red Hat?

Point here is that term bare-metal cannot apply to applications relying on OS features. Unikernels are the closest thing you can use this term in this area.

Wikipedia [0] doesn't agree with you (neither do I, but who am I anyway?):

"A bare-metal server is a computer server that hosts one tenant, or consumer, only.[1] The term is used for distinguishing between servers that can host multiple tenants and which utilize virtualisation and cloud hosting.[2] Such servers are used by a single consumer and are not shared between consumers. Each server may run any amount of work for a user, or have multiple simultaneous users, but they are dedicated entirely to the entity who is renting them. Unlike servers in a data centre, they are not being shared between multiple customers.

Bare-metal servers are physical servers. Each server offered for rental is a distinct physical piece of hardware that is a functional server on its own. They are not virtual servers running in multiple pieces of shared hardware."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bare-metal_server

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bare_machine. Quoting the important part:

> In computer science, bare machine (or bare metal) refers to a computer executing instructions directly on logic hardware without an intervening operating system.

Bare-metal server has indeed been used to refer to non-virtualized servers, but it's a misnomer. The current terminology for this is "dedicated server".

I've never heard of that before. Besides, dedicated server is an unfortunate term in practice either; I may pay Hetzner for a bunch of dedicated servers, some run a bunch of VMs, some run Kafka without a virtualization layer. My services in containers on Kubernetes in VMs on dedicated servers are still running on dedicated servers, but definitely not what I'd call bare metal. In my experience, calling the Kafka server "bare metal" is understood by everyone, used by pretty much everyone I've come across and doesn't get mixed up with adjacent concepts so easily. Maybe that's different in niche/research circles where "bare machine" is a concept that's actually relevant in day-to-day work, I wouldn't know. As far as I'm aware, the term is very much alive and kicking.

I think you'll find that hardware/embedded development is not a niche industry.

A misnomer repeated a thousand times by a thousand different people becomes a/the new meaning. It's how human languages work and evolve or change over time.

Today when most tech people talk about bare metal they refer to a server that is not virtual.

It is still insignificant compared to the original terminology, which is heavily used in hardware/embedded to distinguish between the use of an OS (embedded RTOS, Linux, etc.) vs. direct programming.

I wouldn't put much stock in page made just in 2016 that started like this https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bare-metal_server...

It has to start with something. It would be a lot weirder if the first revision had been a white paper.

If you disagree with what's on the page, please add or edit the information there. With proper references, it will be appreciated by everyone that uses Wikipedia.

I'm saying the term is much older than this, don't be obtuse.

Most terms are much older than their corresponding Wikipedia pages. I'm really failing to see your point here.

This is not how I've heard any of my coworkers define bare-metal. Obviously anecdotal, but I think you are in the minority here.

Turns out, the minority is right FWIW.

But you still can't stop language from changing no matter how "right" you are you.

Seems like a wasted term for something only 10 people in the world will care about doing.

Even Apple named their API Metal in reference to existing phrases like "running close to the metal" back in 2014 and even then it raised some eyebrows in my opinion, but that usage is still miles better than basically saying you're running a program normally. Since when absence of virtualization requires articles to be written about?

It is possible to run containers directly on top of type 1 hypervisors.

If you mean something like runV which runs Linux kernel in a lightweight VM still then how does that move the needle in the bare-metal direction exactly?