Eh, looking around, I think you're thinking of Debian. They re-enabled it by-default back in 2009. So, sure, I guess. But if you're dealing with an OS that's from 2009 these days, whether /dev/tcp is enabled in bash or not isn't exactly relevant anymore. And I've seen enough broken python installs (even with stdlib) to put my faith in /dev/tcp working in bash :)