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Operating Systems Software The Internet BSD

FreeBSD: Not Exactly Dead 184

Posted by timothy from the the-kind-of-death-we-long-for dept.
quantumice writes "It would seem that despite being dead and there only being six of us who use it, FreeBSD has clocked up nearly 2.5 million active sites according to Netcraft. So by my estimates that must mean that I and each of my 5 friends run 416 667 sites. That might explain my high bandwidth usage."
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FreeBSD: Not Exactly Dead More

FreeBSD: Not Exactly Dead

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  • Gentlemen (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @02:50AM (#9374867)
    Start your trolling

    • Re:Gentlemen (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kwench ( 539630 )
      I'd love to... but I still don't understand why everybody is raving about *BSD being dead.

      After having learned that Windows XP is a VMS clone [cs.vu.nl] and that Linux is a Minix clone which is a UNIX clone which is a MULTICS clone which is a CTSS clone which is a FMS clone which I have never heard about and which is probably dead, dead, dead [adti.net] I'd think that everything - even BeOS and QNX (and this FreeBSD clone MacOS X) are UNIX-influenced (if not based) and therefore dead, dead, dead. 8-)
      I used to prefer FreeBSD

      • Re:Gentlemen (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Just a bunch of persistent slashdot trolls. That's it. They don't bother sites that provide better coverage of all things BSD. The slashdot trolls seem to be afraid of BSD taking over their advocacy turf or something. Recall the rather bizarre hostile reaction to a bsd section being added to slashdot.

      • Re:Gentlemen (Score:1, Interesting)

        by ArbitraryConstant ( 763964 )
        The longest I've tracked Gentoo stable without something vital breaking is about 60 days. I've had situations where the stable branch wouldn't compile because some of the packages required a package in the unstable branch. If anyone, anywhere, had tried it in any way on a -stable system before it was released to the stable branch, it would have been caught.

        FreeBSD isn't perfect, but it's telling that FreeBSD-current works more consistently than Gentoo-stable. Give Debian-unstable a shot, it's more consiste
        • Debian is also a quite nice distribution but it lacks up-to-date packages. At least in the stable-branch.

          Examples?
          1. There is not recent version of boa available. Having written some weird CGI-progs I need the most recent version which fixes some bugs in boa.
          (And, no, apache is not an option for me!)

          2. All the rest of my favorite software packages is not quite actual... Mozilla-1.0.0 (in stable), Sylpheed-Claws 0.7.4claw3 (in stable). Unstable is a bit better but still not up2date.
        • In favour of Gentoo I might add I had an old Dell P90 (upgraded with an Evergreen AMD to I think 266) which managed about 440 days uptime with Gentoo (it wasn't used too much, though, and I had some problems with the portage database; it retired itself when one of the old 1GB SCSI disks packed away; the rest now is living it's last days running OpenBSD 3.5 as a firewall between a DMZ and a wireless setup). I liked Gentoo because of the BSD portage ideas, which generally work, but again in my view there is

    • Trolls rarely be where expected (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Interestingly enough, stories that would seem to be obvious [slashdot.org] troll fodder don't seem to attract all that much troll interest.

      Go figure.
    • Start your trolling? Why? The "BSD is dead" trolls have managed to troll up an entire story. Anything further would diminish the perfection of that accomplishment. Besides, in this case they'd be "redundant" as well as "troll". "Redundant" but not at all "offtopic".
      • Exactly. When I saw this story I shook my head. Drink to the BSD trolls tonight. They've been so influential that they now have their own Slashdot story. The editors have been trolled.

  • pair Networks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rixstep ( 611236 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @03:35AM (#9374987) Homepage
    pair [pair.com] have been using it all along. They've got well over 100,000 domains running. They're but one company.

    Oh yeah - Apple's another...

  • so, umm.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @03:38AM (#9374997) Homepage Journal
    does this mean that domain hijackers/squatters use openbsd? They sure could use the security anyways..

    what a pointless story!

  • What we need (Score:3, Insightful)

    by krist0 ( 313699 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @03:46AM (#9375020) Homepage Journal
    is to be able to moderate an entire story as a troll.

  • I have.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @04:10AM (#9375069)
    1 machine that runs Mac OSX (a Powerbook)
    1 machine that runs Windows 2000 (games machine)
    1 machine that runs FreeBSD (workhorse server)
    1 machine that runs BeOS 5 (old machine, not seriously used)

    I consider all of the above to be "best of breed" operating systems. Linux absolutely blows because of the fragmented userbase. I have a hard time caring about it because of the thousand different distributions all doing things differently.

    FreeBSD beats the crap out of Linux for:

    * Ease of use - extremely well documented, everything is logically organised
    * Reliability - they.. shock.. *test* before they release! (unlike Fedora's GRUB which nuked my drive when I tried it)
    * Compatibility - the ports tree is fantastic, plus it runs Linux executables

    In short: FreeBSD is great. If you've ever become frustrated with Linux, give it a try. I guarantee you'll love it!

    • FreeBSD in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n0dez ( 657944 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @05:00AM (#9375199) Homepage
      It's a complete OS.
      It's not a clone.
      Everything runs faster.
      It doesn't mess up with your MBR.
      It does not come with a particular browser pre-installed.
      It's always fun to run FreeBSD. [mavetju.org]
      • FreeBSD can install its own MBR. It just doesn't, by default.

        Linux can install its own MBR. Most distros do, by default.

        As far as the browser bit, so what? I can set up a Slackware Linux system with no browser, and it's still completely functional, in that it doesn't crash, and everything that is installed runs correctly.

  • very funny. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @05:33AM (#9375294) Homepage
    But, as a matter of fact, if you read the netcraft report you yourself are linking to, then you see that indeed, FreeBSD is significant in webservers largely because a few large hosting-providers use it.

    Quoting the article; The reason for this is FreeBSD's deployment with the operators of shared hosting systems, where tens and even hundreds of thousands of sites are collectively administered as part of a single system.

    Yahoo alone hosts something like a quarter million sites.

    Perhaps this also explains the low media-profile to some degree ? 10000 companies running 25 sites each are likely to collectively generate a lot more buzz than a single site running a quarter million sites.

    • Re:very funny. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @01:27PM (#9379816)
      What exactly are you trying to say here?

      That BSD is still dead because it's a small number of individual establishments using it, despite the large amount of systems they run it on?

      2.5 million servers is still a big number, regardless of how spread out it is. Just b/c people say it's dead doesn't mean 2.5 million servers will be changed to Linux tomorrow.

      • Re:very funny. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Eivind ( 15695 )
        Simple.

        I'm saying that with a usage-profile like that. (i.e. not terribly many users, but heavy users) they will tend to get a lot less publicity than they would if the same usage was spread over more users. This migth be part of the explanation for why FreeBSD gets so little attention inspite of doing a nice job for a lot of sites.

        • Re:very funny. (Score:4, Funny)

          by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @02:52PM (#9380882) Homepage Journal
          You're saying since FreeBSD doesn't have 2.5 million prepubescent screaming nerds running it, the media doesn't pay attention? That sounds like a good thing! In fact, it sounds like a new motto:

          FreeBSD: Move out of your parent's basement!

          • Re:very funny. (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Eivind ( 15695 )
            Hi, don't get so defensive. I'm not trying to diss BSD at all. I'm all in favour of a healthy ecosystem of OSes. My ideal would be a situation where no single OS has a dominant position, that would ensure *real* competition and benefit all.

            Besides, would you stop trolling ? I fail to see why it's of any relevance whatsoever, but I live 2000 km from my parents basement, together with my lovely wife and our yet-unborn son. The kid living in his parents basement is a clichee no more true about Linux than the

    • Re:very funny. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by pooh666 ( 624584 )
      The main point is, that many very large service providers choose to do their shared/virtual hosting on FreeBSD. hmmm, wonder why?? Maybe those very high end network engineers and admins know something.. :)

  • Question (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I love the way I can build the whole system from source, but I am wanting to try out Linux kernel. Is there a similar Linux system for free? Thanx.

    • Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:28PM (#9383392)
      Yes, I don't know if you're serious, but Gentoo Linux is a build-from-source Linux distro that has a ports system called 'portage'

      I myself use Gentoo because I prefer Linux over the *BSDs I've tried, but Gentoo lets me build from source VERY easily.

  • Cheers! (Score:3, Funny)

    by funwithBSD ( 245349 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @10:21AM (#9377403)
    From user 5 of 6.

  • Monitoring... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alexatrit ( 689331 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @11:17AM (#9378109) Homepage
    This is all rather dependant on the accuracy of Netcraft. Although most of the FreeBSD systems I maintain are identified correctly by Netcraft, there are several that always come back as unknown. Netcraft OS detections seems to be reasonable, but not perfect. Their webserver detection is as accurate as it can be, but uptime checks seem to be even less perfect.
  • one of your friends ;-) ..

  • When you've done a proper study:

    - investigate the use cases and # of use of different OS's in various market segments;
    - investigate trends/decline/fall over the past couple of years, etc;

    Otherwise, this is all just wanking around based upon individual data points that are interesting in themselves, but are absolutely useless in conveying a broader picture.

  • The best part about FreeBSD (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is that you don't have to deal with all that GPL bullshit.

    BSD = Capitalism friendly

  • 6? (Score:1, Funny)

    by JamesTRexx ( 675890 )
    Nono.. There must be 7 because I use it too and I don't know any of you other 6 guys (or gals if there are any, but then this is slashdot and if even the Linux users can't get any, how on earth are dead FreeBSD users supposed to get any).

  • http://lainos.sourceforge.net/index.php

    A new OS inspired by Serial Experiments Lain built ontop of BSD...Interesting

  • Yes, this is TOTALLY off topic.. but the one thing that keeps a linux machine around my house is vmware GSX server ( current ) and Crossover Linux ( no, stock wine wont do the trick )

    If there was a way to run them under the linux ABI for FBSD, that would be one less linux machine for the stats..

    Any one with pointers?
  • VDR has not been portet yet, therefore a number of zero pvrs run on bsd yet, therefore it must be dead or at least smelling
  • Having some small software developed from time to time, I hit software bugs, as usual. In case they occur both on Linux and BSD, Linux user has to give the architecture name, Linux distribution used name, kernel version, gcc version, glibc version... In case of BSD, this is architecture and BSD version.

    Reproducing bugs? If it hits FreeBSD-CURRENT, other people can checkout and build whole system, exactly like it was by the date I provide. Try to do the same thing with your Linux OS ;)

    Building packages? Yes

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