Slashdot Mirror
EvansData can't tell BSD from Linux
mr writes "The boys and girls at Evans Data want to sell you a 178 page report about Linux. Now, they had a page that put FreeBSD between Caldara and Debian as far as how often it is used as a web server.
They have pulled FreeBSD from the list. Seems Evans Data just figured out that FreeBSD isn't Linux. Did Evens Data use pages from TigerSoftware or perhaps the crack staff of Tucows?" There's also a Daily DaemonNews story with some figures.
Next week: NYT mistakes Linux + GNOME for MS Windows!
Does my bum look big in this?
What exactly is the differences between BSD and Linux? I'm relitivly familiar with linux but i don't really have any experiance with BSD. It's sorta an area i've been meaning to get into but not quite broke into yet...
Providing market intelligence for the Development Community
Is it just me or is this not the best reccomendation for a company attempting to sell data? I know it's a simple mistake for most to make, but these guys are purveyors of supposedly correct info for christ's sake. Not good to reveal complete(or at least significant) ignorance about your main selling point.
This sig may be reproduced by anyone for any reason.
Did you not see the 'Other' down there? Probably has Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and OS400.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
That was pretty quick. The /. effect in full motion ? Oh well, we all make silly mistakes sometimes.
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
Once you've got a BSD box and a Linux box set up, all the hardware working and stuff, Linux and BSD are virtually indistinguishable. They both run posix apps, they both use X, they both have the same /dev/ device. The only difference is a recompile, and sometimes even that isn't needed.
They seem to have this stuff pretty OK as of now. At least at the first glance at local bsd.tucows.com mirror, it looks alive and well and not containing all the problems BSD Today complained about. Seems like they hired somebody with real knowledge. Good.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I am a firm believer in "when mistakes happen, the friggin' management is at fault"
On a side note, slashdot is showing up red today. Lets all bitch about that!
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
My gut feeling when something like this happens is that they really made a report on OSS software and its developers, programs and deployments.
Then somebody thought they should rename the paper to "Linux Developer Survey" since that would sell it better than "OSS Developer Survey" and thus they needed to change some things, but forgot to remove FreeBSD from the list.
(RANT_MODE_ON)Personally I don't understand why this is news. Things like this happens all the time and it's not really a big deal. Personally I would like to see how FreeBSD relates to some of the Linux distributions. To me, as a (non-kernel/non-system level) developer and everyday user I do put Free/Open/NetBSD into the same category as all the Linux distributions, A package with OS, programs, manuals and services containing everything I need and to at least 95% based on free software (wish I could say 100% but I still need Netscape and StarOffice although I hopefully can replace them soon with their free sucessors). That the kernel and system tools are xBSD instead of Linux I don't care a shit about. I still run the same XFree, the same desktop environment and the same programs. For what it's worth, the system still works the same for nearly everything I do and for me as a user there might be much bigger differences between various Linux distributions than a certain distribution and FreeBSD since they package different desktop environments and programs and configure them differently.
I can't understand why this upsets people so much. It's one thing to politely write them and ask them to correct their report and another to go balistic over these details. Is it the Linux and BSD elitists that doesn't want to be associated with each other?
Just face it, FreeBSD, Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera etc are "Distributions of Free Implementations of UNIX bundled with associated programs, manuals, services and stuff". That some of them are based on different kernels and have differences in design policies doesn't make them THAT different! My and one of my friends computers differs a lot more from the choice of installed window managers and programs from a users perspective than the fact that he runs FreeBSD and I run Linux.
I don't say we shouldn't teach and correct them, but everytime something like this happens it is totally blown out of proportions.(RANT_MODE_OFF)
20% of respondants stated that, given their choice of Linux distributions, they would use FreeBSD.
I wonder how many would use FreeBSD if they weren't told to restrict their choice to Linux distributions?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
From the page:
"It has been brought to our attention that FreeBSD is not a Linux distribution. The data was revised to exclude FreeBSD, and the numbers above reflect the corrections. We apologize for the mistake."
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
As for the article itself, to the home user market there is no difference between BSD and Linux, Linux is just the catch-all term for free Unix-like OS. In that sense it does make sense for FreeBSD to be included.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
We are so clever and they are so stupid! Let's all point & laugh now kids!
So what, apart from about 4 seconds of potential amusement, makes this story news worthy?
Not everyone understands the free software landscape, so what? I don't know anything about the ways of pollsters & statistics gathering companies. Does that give them the right to take the piss out of me?
Why can't people just grow up and accept that not everyone can be an expert in everything. Smugly pointing out that they "just realised" and pulled BSD from their list isn't helping anyone. Neither are the hundreds of flames from illiterate wannabe techies that almost certainly contributed to the amendment.
These days slashdot seems to exist to prove that most free software users are wankers.
Cheers... .*shrc is
--
$HOME is where the
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
This is a strange coincidence. I've seen a couple of researches and reports recently that were not made by exactly competent people...
Recently some people from University of Helsinki E-mail-interviewed the readers of sfnet.atk.linux newsgroup (the report is in Finnish). I answered the questions, even when the questions were sort of silly. Well, results were not exactly great either - it just showed that the survey makers had not used Linux before. For example, "Debian" and "Debian 'potato'" were mentioned separately in distribution preference summary, and when talking of StarOffice, many people had said they "use the other word processing program, LaTex" (emphasis mine).
(Okay, that was academic thing and this Evans thing is a commercial report, but interesting coincidence nevertheless)
I have to wonder what "Debian GNU Linux - Infomagic or Loki" is supposed to mean.
--
see shy jo
Nope. RedHat was 1st at 77% or 266 votes. FreeBSD was at 20% or 60 votes.
Now, they were asking for Linux versions. Had they asked for Open Source Unix-like OSes, I'm betting there would have been a few more votes for FreeBSD.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Of course that also applies to Hurd....
We should get RMS to give them some lectures!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If the intention of the open source community is to create an OS to rival Windows, wouldn't it be better if the BSD developers developed Linux instead
It would be best if everyone used a BSD style license. Then EVERYONE could use the code.
As it is, a conclusion one could draw from this 300 person snapshot is that FreeBSD is as acceptable, if not more so, than any version of linux other than RedHat.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
after all of slashdot's (justified) slagging of doubleclick i was a bit surprised 2 c this bit of code in =this= page...
w s/B35606;sz=468x60;ord=985955146985955146"
IFRAME SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N815.andoverne
errm, oops? #-)
"i'm here to chew ass and kick bubble-gum. and i'm all out of bubble gum..."
I guess this just shows how relevant statistics are and how much we are to trust them. Most likely most statistics we see lead to wrong interpretations or contains significant errors, but most people won't recognize them due to their unfamiliarity with the matter.
Linux raised public conciousness of free *nix style systems and the reward is that when people think of free distributions, they think 'Linux'.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Is Linux something like Office? Does it have a dancing paperclip? I tried to install Linux but it was black and white....isn't Linux supposed to be better than MS Word? Then why was it all black and white? eval{ Troll: "Hihihihihihihihiihhuhuhuhhahahahahahahahahaha" } Also, what is FreeBUD you talk so much about? Where do you guys get free stuff? Why do you compare beer and Linux? eval{ Troll: "HUHUHUHIHIHIHIHHIHHIHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH" }
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
As was pointed out in some other comments. No it does not make sence to bunch FreeBSD in with UNIX-like OSes as it IS Unix.
BSD is already in deep trouble.
.... BSD is hurting more than most, however.
Really? Based on this sample of 300 people, the only one not in trouble is RedHat.
Debian/Slackware/Turbo/Corel linux all did worse than FreeBSD. And Debian and the rest are more dead than FreeBSD. Yet, FreeBSD was within 2% of SuSE/Mandrake/Caldera.
If FreeBSD is "in trouble" so is SuSe/Mandrake/Caldera. Oh, wait SuSe can't afford US Staffers
From an investor's perspective, it's fair to say that BSD is dead.
Acually, BSDi is in the BEST position.
The 180+ linux distros PROVE selling Linux is a commodity market. In a commodity market, you want market differentiation. According to a poll where you are to pick a LINUX version, FreeBSD is as acceptable or more so than any other Linux version (other than RedHat) And what a market differentiation FreeBSD has. A different development model, more open license, runs Linux binaries faster than linux...all these improvements and yet seen as good/better than anything else but RedHat.
BSDi would have to be a publicly traded company for it to matter to any investor. Oh, wait, they are a private company. $14 mil last year from yahoo!/Japanese ISP/Japanese VC....and Japan's economy has sucked far worse far longer than the US dot com market has. a nikkei snapshot
But lets say you are correct. Then BSDi will be bought up by someone else. Odds are some Japanese company. Could even be Sony....Why buy Apple when you can buy the core to Apple's new OS?
f course that can be said
And you keep pushing this anti-BSD adjenda. Give it up.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
here we have a classic example of what is known as a "larval troll."
the larval troll will generally be seen issuing retorts and "misguided" comments amongst the threads created by others as they are not, generally, intellectually well rounded enough to post in the deeper waters of the actual subject matter.
We see here, the common tool of the troll(er), usually using a 4lb. test line with Signal11's (r) flame bait. Aditionally, you'll notice the lack of marking on the name (usually relegated to "AC" status or some phony name created exclusively for this post, or perhaps one or two more.)
Also note the strong passive agressive tendencies in the above troll. It becomes obvious to the observer that the obvious lack of knowledge about even the most rudimentary of *nix skills is completely absent in this larval stage. While it is well known that most "geeks" have small penises, this troll (subset of geek, see Dr. Shoemaker's study 4.12.94 - The Pencil Neck Report) appears to be completely uncomfortable with that fact and, in combination with said lack of intellectual ability, will continue to be agressive throughout the larval stage.
Other common indicators include lack of ability to gather "karma" for ability to troll at +2. Also, generally, a lack of responses from the slashdot reading public. This specimen will most likely recieve responses containing the word "fuck" for most of its young life. Perhaps, after gaining a "tag" and posting for several more months (the usual gestation period for a larval troll), this fine creature will finally begin to blossom into the full grown troll that it so richly deserves to be.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
give credit where credit is due. that's an original Onion piece.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I was screwed when i bought their report on american muscle cars a while back.
you know..the one about the Mustang, the Camaro, the Firebird, and the RX-7.
imagine my anger when i read their page a month later and found out the Mustang isn't really an American muscle car!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I like the URL obfuscation. Can you explain it please?
bp
Original
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Hypercard was great... I was writing decent-quality programs in it when I was 4 years old. Why haven't other languages progressed to the natural level of Hypertalk yet?
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
"runs Linux binaries faster than linux"
I have heard that couple of times. Do you have any data proving this statement ?
What little I've seen of companies that charge a shitload of money for technical data has not been particularly impressive. They exhibit a uniform sense of cluelessness which immediately sets my Dilbert Sense a-tinglin'. If you own stock in a company that purchases these reports, maybe you should bring this issue up at the next shareholder's meeting, as generally that money would be better spent building a giant statue of Richard Nixon out of solid gold.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Wait wait wait.... they're different?? How come nobody told me about this! Damn! We've got TWO things to buy now!" -Bill Gates
-brain
I didn't make it, but is has something to do with the @ symbol re-directing things to another site.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The duke of URL had a graph showing quake running faster on FreeBSD than Linux. way to the Duke and the duke and for the graph. the graph showing its faster
And Walnut Creek had a 1 page glossy claiming 20-30% faster performance.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
If confusing Linux and FreeBSD is such a problem, how about all those ignorant programmers who answered "FreeBSD" when asked what Linux distro they use. Boy are THEY pathetic losers.
-------------------------
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
You know your little penis complex gets old after a while.
If you like freebsd then go ahead and use it; nobody is trying to stop you. The fact that you have wasted brainspace remembering useless tibits of anti-linux drivel speaks volumes about you.
Get a hobby or something.
- Toby
FYI, even though the OSX glossy says it is FreeBSD based, it is MACH with a compatibility layer to use FreeBSD drivers and filesystems and such. Look at the darwin docs on Apple's pages, or look at OSX in a store and poke around a bit. I would rather they used FreeBSD (or NetBSD), but the mach part was probably very very useful in getting the Classic compatibility mode to work (did you know it can run the 68000 version of MacDraw still?).
Hey look I can post as a gutless AC too!
If only it were about clear "facts" and not simply that you are a disagreeable twat who does nothing to help the cause of BSD with your inane rhetoric.
- Toby
Those graphs pretty much show that the two are equal running linux binaries, but BSD is faster in networking, which is generally accepted to be true. Besides, usually with things like quake3 the speed depends entirely on the through put of the graphics card. There are some graphs that show the celeron and athlon tied at q3demos because the graphics card cannot push enough pixels. See the bottom graph. And I wouldn't necessarily trust any graph from Walnut Creek, RedHat, Sun or even Microsoft. Remember they are just in this for the money. They are trying to push as many units as possible by making themselves look the best. Marketing crap at it's greatest.
By and large there will not be a major difference between the two platform, except when accessing devices, because they both execute x86 code, and no matter if the format is elf or not, there is only so many ways to generate code, especially if they both use the same compiler, gcc. Only system calls to the kernel are going to have a big difference.
An explanation is available on this website. You can find it if you look.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Hey...FreeBSD was .1 faster. *smile* and that is all that matters....that it is faster running them linux binaries.
:-)
No one ever said that it was significant, or would stay that way
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
http://3520040376/new_010325/alert/breakingnews.h
Or this one:n gnews.html
http://centralhosting.net/new_010325/alert/breaki
The 3520040376 is the IP address of the machine. Then the stuff before the @ is just a username.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I ljust love those little iMacs - 10 minutes out of the box and I was online, serving up web pages from my Apache server.
HA HA HA H AAH HAHHA HHAAH HHAAA AAAA
So I just installed OS X right? And Terminal gives that command line thingy right? And all I know how to do are ping things and look at man pages...
They've got a terrific little racket going there. Would you like to find out how you too can MAKE MONEY FAST in the challenging, high tech world of executive reports?
While thousands have paid big bucks to find out, because you readers of /. are special, I'll tell you for
free.
What you do is find a technology, find a newsgroup or list around the technology, get the names of the folks on the list who post a lot, and start making phone calls.
You tell your interviewees that if they give you an interview, they'll get a free copy of the report.
Now here's the sweet part: make sure some of the people on your list work for a "prestige" company. Then, because you've given the person at that company a free copy of the report, just as you've promised, that company goes on your list of clients which you present to people you're trying to sell these reports to. "Oh", say your victims, "if XYZ is interested in this technology, I'd better pay the couple of hundred bucks and read the report myself."
I work for, uh, a company that makes a lot of airplanes, and my research interests require me to be involved in some open forums. So I turn away about one of these interviews a month.
I did give a couple of interviews, and did in fact get my reports, and the reports were pitiful: 50 pages with lots of white space, revealing an unclear grasp of both the technology and the marketplace. For instance, one guy who calls me regularly seems to be obsessed with Windows CE and its threat to the established players in the embedded RTOS market. Yeah, that's going to happen.
What I suspect is, he's no more clueless than his customers, and he's found some customers who are willing to pay for reports on that subject.
Which reveals the other sweet part of this racket: you can issue another report 6 months later on "Changing Trends in the X Market". Just interview the same people (if you're moderately ethical) all over again.
Frankly, I don't know why anybody bothers to learn how to be a spammer. This is where the money is.
I'm a little bit hazy on the details of how you sell these reports and who you sell them to, but evidently somebody knows, and it must not be that hard. As Barnum noted, a potential customer for your executive reports is born approximately every sixty seconds.
I suggest you try it out like I did.
/etc structure is sooo clean and sooo simple and sooo easy to use. Their ports system is sooo easy to use.
I first tried it out just because I was curious about that BSD thing.
I installed the exact same software I use on linux (KDE,mp3blaster,g++,perl,vim) and it looks and feels exactly the same.
I started to use it just like my old linux desktop and it just sticked. I would like to note my plan was just to test it out but after a while I began to forget that I'm actually using freeBSD.
I liked it so much. Everything felt sold. It's hard to describe that feeling but freeBSD is so much cleaner than any linux distro that it really makes you feel like your getting every ounce of power out of your hardware. Their installation is very nice you don't need to install a lot of crap just to get what you need.
Personally, at first I wasn't sure what to answer diehard linux people who asked me what I used at home. They were curious at how "pleased" I was with what I was using. I was nolonger installing and reinstalling linux distros all the time.
I've seen and used linux and I liked it. Now I've seen and used freeBSD and I liked it too.
Linux introduced me to the unix world and now freeBSD show me the power of the unix world.
So now I'm an equal linux/BSD advocate.
Their
After installing it ask yourself this:
Do you have that BSD thing?
I sure do!
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
I can't believe I'm responding to this.
I beg to differ. People will judge linux for what it is and and *BSD for what it is.
So far a lot of people and companies start out with linux because of popularity. However, when they run and try *BSD they stick with it. They like it because linux is dirty and packaged with bandaids and *BSD is packaged clean!
So I believe that linux popularity is a good thing. As long as linux grows *BSD will always be there as the superior opensource product.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
I don't think they have enough responses for the poll to be statistically valid, anyway. Is someone actually paying for this "report"?
Michael
Do you have ESP?
I think it's safe to say you're talking out of the wrong hole.
BSD is dead in the sense that CP/M is dead. It is still used, but it is not a viable platform for future development.
Then in your world, the only viable Linux is RedHat. And Caldera/Suse/Mandrake are nearly dead, with Debian more of a hobby effort than FreeBSD.
I just want to make sure that I've got this straight.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Hm. I have linux rpm , netscape, acrobat, even quake3 ... if i type /compat/linux/bin/sh i get a shell in a vanilla redhat system, X and all (linux X clients running on BSD's native X server that is).
I guess that's technically not a linux distribution in its own right, it just contains one. i rather wish it was debian and not redhat, but i imagine the purpose of having redhat is to install all those proprietary software packages that only exist as rpms for redhat.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
"If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists and dilettantes." Good. Who really cares if the people who just put the fancy labels on it go out of business?
Bugtraq and the Netcraft uptime report don't agree with you that the difference between BSD and Linux is "just religion", unless your religion is staying up and unhacked.
I just exchanged email with Kristin Ford at Evans Data; the FreeBSD data is being restored to the site. They will also include the table with the "Linux only" stuff for the crybabies...
Unix is a registered trademark. I think SCO owns it currently. I do not believe that FreeBSD has licensed this trademark. So, legally, it should not be called "unix".
Then there is the technical argument, that since FreeBSD descended from BSD, which descended from the original AT&T Unix, it is a "legitimate" Unix. By the same argument, since Linux is a ground-up rewrite, sharing no AT&T code, it is not "unix". This is not as cut-and-dry as it sounds, however.
FreeBSD is actually descended from 4.4 BSD-Lite. Why is it called "Lite"? Because it is *unencumbered* of the tie to AT&T. The Berkeley people went through and rewrote / eliminated code so that they could release a system independent of the old Bell Labs version, thus avoiding licensing difficulties with AT&T. So, FreeBSD is independent of the original unix *anyway*.
So, does BSD/Lite constitute a complete rewrite, that was merely carried out in stages? If so, then FreeBSD shares no more blood with the original Unix than Linux does.
Anyway, definining "Unix" so narrowly seems a bit silly to me. These systems all descend from the same tradition. I see no need to try to lay claim to legitimacy based on code lineage.
--Lenny
God, I might buy this report just for the humor value. Rock on, EvansData! You might have a career in comedy after all....
Well, it is alive and kicking, but not by this account. BTW, all the SYSv proponents should at least consider the wisdom of XWindows being a run level. Pretty unfortunate that my database has to be stopped and restarted when I go from X to console mode. Sure, you can change it; but, I don't think Red Hat expects you to know how, or they wouldn't have outthunk the consumer to the extent they do.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
What kind of survey records a score of 1 when it also has a category of "Other" which had 32 respondents. I am sure that the people at http://WWW.PHATLINUX.COM/ are chuffed but I would hardly call it professional reporting. Then again, Phat just got some free promotion as I had never heard of it before.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
There is a generic term. It's "unix"
No. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, a division of The Open Group. LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. The generic term for systems with a working implementation of the functions in unistd.h is "POSIX conforming systems."
Will I retire or break 10K?
No, I've never ever looked at a BSD topic before, because the only time I've ever in my life been interested in BSD was when when BSD had a network layer and Linux didn't. (anyone else remember back that far?) And every time I've had moderator points (both times) all topics that I read were in the 'red' scheme such as this. :P
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Ohhhh, the troll is upset.
(pokes troll with stick)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
They'll probably put out an article about "GNU UNIX" or "The LAME MP3 Encoder".
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer