Can't remember the name (if it has one), but there's a linguistic phenomenon where words take on opposite meanings from the original. The "Peacemaker" was a missile, "literally" now means "figuratively", "awful" used to mean "awe-inspiring". And apparently "bare metal" now means "runs on an operating system".
OTOH, technical fields develop jargon specifically as a solution to the problems created by semantic drift in vernacular vocabulary.
Sure, languages evolve, but that doesn't mean "anything goes" -- to the contrary, novel mutations have to survive intense selection pressures in order to eventually become part of the standard language.
Where new ways of using existing terms create ambiguity and conflict with existing meanings, their survival chances aren't always great.
Although, there are multiple people in the talk section[0] arguing for the "'physical' machine" definition. Might have to get used to it, along with "crypto" and "algorithm".
The trendy uses are "algorithim" and "crypto" are specific cases of the general meanings of these terms -- there's no contradiction or ambiguity introduced here, so these uses are OK, although people presuming the narrower trendy meanings in broader contexts are wrong.
This use of "bare metal" does contradict the pre-existing meaning, so is not quite appropriate. What is valid is describing the OS itself as running on bare metal in contrast to running within a VM/container -- but an application running on top of that OS is not running on bare metal.
This isn't particularly egregious, though, since there are negligible cases of actually running applications on bare metal today: if you are talking about applications, the context can usually explain the intended meaning. But that wasn't always the case in the past (PC "booter" software used to be common), so this doesn't necessarily apply retrospectively, and may not be the case in the future, especially considering some of the interesting things companies like Oxide are working on.
You shouldn't back off a correct statement just because some rando on the internet challenges you. Bare metal is absolutely the correct terminology here.
Hehe. Not big on picking fights over minutiae. Also, English isn't my first language, so there's always a chance of making legit mistakes when picking terms. But in my 7 years of working in the industry, I've heard it used in this context by many.
