On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 15:53, Marc Espie wrote: > On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 08:08:29PM -0500, Ted Unangst wrote: >> I generally associate negative connotations with so-called, as in >> the "so-called free world". I wouldn't use it just to name something, >> as in "the kernel is written in the so-called C language". so-called >> implies "it's called this, but it's not". >> >> Two imo dubious occurrences in the install notes. It's not a so-called >> MBR partition; it is an MBR partition. Similarly with hppa LIF. >> There's one other use in loongson about initrd which seems ok. >> > > I agree with "so-called" having negative connotations. > > I think both those instances are using it intentionally, namely there > are nasty surprises in some MBR blocks that are not covered by > the so-called MBR standard.
I'd agree if we were talking about the so-called MBR standard. But the partitions created by fdisk are as close to real as we can make them; they aren't imposters. Note also it's not about boot blocks, this text appears on several archs, including arm, which don't necessarily use MBR booting.
