Extracting the system verification?

The system verification logic seems incredibly useful but also infinitely extensible.

I think it would be extremely useful to have a consistent template for implementing these for arbitrary system-level dependencies that takes the different operating systems into account and provides helpful error messages (e.g. pointing out the nodesource repository when a node check on Linux fails or simply pointing users to the official download page for their OS).

Instead of adding these individually to this module (which will require a lot of subjective judgement on whether they should be included in the "core" or not) maybe we can extract a consistent spec/API for them and publish them individually on npm and group them via an ecosystem tag.

Start by reading the existing system verification logic in the module referenced by the issue, then compare how operating-system-specific checks and failure messages are handled. Define the proposed spec/API boundary and npm package grouping before implementation; done means the scope, extensibility model, and user-facing guidance are agreed.