Top Five Reliable Providers

I'd agree, but by tyrani · 2003-07-13 01:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'd agree that server reliability depends on the O/S used, reliability has much more to do with the installation and setup of the server.

So, congratulations should go out to the sys admins of those servers.

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rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?

Re:I'd agree, but by Motherfucking+Shit · 2003-07-13 01:32 · Score: 4, Funny

rejected (16) accepted (0)
Is there a psycological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
"Nogirlphrenia," of course :)

--
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:38 · Score: 1, Insightful

Longer uptimes mean the chance of having a unpatched security hole is greater. My FreeBSD machine makes and re-installs world at least once a month and more if security holes are found. IMHO those admins should not be congratulated for their laziness/incompetance/stupidity/ego.
Re:I'd agree, but by ThePeeWeeMan · 2003-07-13 01:48 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Why was that modded offtopic?! You've got to credit this poster for understanding the *real* reason why 99.99999999% of submissions get rejected, which is to fulfil /.'s role as a geek center and increase the level of geek procreation. :-)
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:07 · Score: 0

you might be a little slow today, but most people care more about the topic than someone's ego. live with it and move on.
Re:I'd agree, but by Ziest · 2003-07-13 02:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Agree. Long uptimes are a recipe for disaster. 2 things can go wrong 1) the system on disk has changed under the system in memory. Broken or missing shared libraries and init scripts. 2) my fav, the disks stop spinning. This is lots of fun. Try it some time. Go to one of your older machine, the one with 500 plus days of uptime. Shut it down, remove the power cord, wait 3 minutes, reattach the power cord, put your finger on the power switch. OK, gentlemen, place your bets. Will all the disks spinup? If they do not, you get to find out how good your backups really are. When was the last time you backed that system up? When was the last time you verified the backup? A simple "Put more memory into this machine" becomes 3 or 4 days of living hell as you run around trying to figure out what happened, try to reconstruct the contents of that dead disk. Fun, fun, fun.

Anyone who allows a machine to go more than 30 days without a reboot is asking for trouble. There is a reason why mainframers have a maintenance window every Sunday.

--
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Re:I'd agree, but by gregmac · 2003-07-13 02:51 · Score: 2, Informative

Anyone who allows a machine to go more than 30 days without a reboot is asking for trouble.
I disagree. While 500 days is quite a few, there's no problem as long as you're diligent. Set up a script to do backups to another system on a regular basis (daily, weekly). I do incremental backups every workday at midnight using rsync. Which means if you mogrify a file, you have up to a week to get back an old copy. I used to have this go to a tape drive, and the tapes just had to be swapped out weekly. Now I just ocasionally archive to CD.
As far as disks dying, RAID1 helps, and is very cheap now and available on many mobo's. With an older server, maybe you don't have this, but maybe if it's a concern, its time to upgrade. Bigger servers often have RAID arrays already.
If you're making any major system changes - ie, the way things boot - then be sure to test it out. Be sure it boots after you make the change and are sitting right in front of it. I'll also assume you're not going to be making changes like this on a mission-critical production server, and actually testing them out on another system first. If you have a production server that you make major changes to without testing, I think it's obvious that you're asking for a disaster.

--
Speak before you think
Re:I'd agree, but by buss_error · 2003-07-13 03:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Agree. Long uptimes are a recipe for disaster. 2 things can go wrong 1) the system on disk has changed under the system in memory. Broken or missing shared libraries and init scripts.
You're the admin. You're supposed to check for this. If the system isn't all that important, I may add patches without checking them on a test system, but if it's important, no patches get added until they are checked on a test system.
2) my fav, the disks stop spinning. This is lots of fun. Try it some time.
You're the admin. You're supposed to be doing backups. Personally, if I think there's a good chance that the drives will fail when I'm doing something ( eg: greater than .5 percent) I make 2 back ups. Tapes can break. Also, I've not seen disks refuse to spin up with out powering off for a while (more than 5 minues). Frequently, you can get the disks spinning again by (gently!) tapping them with a screwdriver. If that doesn't work, sometimes heating them with a lightbulb will work. Heatlamps work too, but you need to be careful not to overheat the drive. I also try to get drives on critical systems replaced every 2 to 3 years. RAID helps here.
Keeping the network, hardware, OS, and applications up is important, but just as important is abuse response. There are a few hosting companies out there that do a wonderful job of keeping things ticking over, but fail absolutely at terminating abusive accounts. Hosting at one of these sites is inviting having your email blocked at the very least. Some sites block all traffic based on what's in the block lists. Part of due dilligence is checking the history of a host by checking at SPEWS, SPAMHAUS, SPAMCOP, News.Admin.Net-Abuse.email, News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Sightings, and other customer's experiences.
I can't find my link to the dead tree report I use to check out hosting companies at the moment, but there are several very nice writeups out there that focus on choosing a good hosting/co-lo company.

--
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Re:I'd agree, but by akorvemaker · 2003-07-13 03:43 · Score: 1

> You're the admin.

Maybe, but there's also people with home systems that they never reboot, such as firewalls or file servers for their home network. For many geeks, a long uptime is a bit of a status symbol. Heck, I was pretty darn proud that I could get my Win95 box to work (doing actual work) for up to about 4 days without a reboot! Sure, but GNU/Linux standards that's pathetic, but I digress. The point is, many home users push their machines. Sure, they are the admins, but they're also just regular schmoes.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:48 · Score: 0

Yeah, that's what you get with an ext2fs file system and a Linux kernel.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:56 · Score: 0

It is now official; Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a mere fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:58 · Score: 0

I agree that FreeBSD is in deep trouble. And while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer.
I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.
Re:I'd agree, but by secolactico · 2003-07-13 04:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

A simple "Put more memory into this machine" becomes 3 or 4 days of living hell

Ah, but the realist (pesimist) admin will always hope for the best and plan for the worst. Critical machines/services need to have standby hardware. If I need to do a hw upgrade/software patch on a production machine, I'll make sure the standby machine is up to date and working before touching the main production machine. That way, If I I can't bring the machine back up in 10 mins, I'll know I have a Plan B machine.

Same goes for any other network equipment. I've seen "carrier class" switches that simply decide to go south upon removal of a hot-swappable module (going by the book).

--
No sig
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:24 · Score: 0

Most can agree that *BSD's failure is self evident. So why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:33 · Score: 0

From: Steve Ballmer
To: Director of astro-turf

Look I know I said we need to capitalize on what we do best, but this is NOT what I meant.

All the best,

Steve-a-rino
Re:I'd agree, but by bcrowell · 2003-07-13 04:45 · Score: 2

I'd agree that server reliability depends on the O/S used, reliability has much more to do with the installation and setup of the server.
The end-user's experience is also much more likely to be influenced by how good their ISP is. Does their ISP drop the connection on long downloads? Does their ISP's modem bank get swamped in the early evening?

--
Find free books.
Re:I'd agree, but by jdhutchins · 2003-07-13 05:07 · Score: 2, Informative

These are all problems that affect individual servers. If you have the money to keep a site up and running for 500+ days, chances are you have load balancing and more than one server. If one server dies, and you have it set up right, you won't have any downtime. You can also take time to do mantainance on one server, and the other servers can pick up the slack.

If one machine dieing brought down Google, they'd probably be constantly down with the number of machines they have. However, they have enough machines, and it's set up correctly, so that it doesn't matter if just one dies.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:26 · Score: 0

You can't argue with facts.
Fact: FreeBSD is dying
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:55 · Score: 0

The BSDs are more stable and (by default) more secure. It also helps that they are not as popular as Linux so script kiddies know less about them.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:59 · Score: 0

Why does a potato at rest sprout roots?
Re:I'd agree, but by buss_error · 2003-07-13 06:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

The point is, many home users push their machines. Sure, they are the admins, but they're also just regular schmoes.
Well, if the system is important to them, they should bestir themselves to learn how to make backups.
My biggest gripe about Novell and MS operating systems, and the Intell platform in general, is the inability to make a boot tape. BRU is able to make a boot disk that will allow a full restore from tape, but that function last I checked was only availble on (gag) SCO.
I want to throw a tape in the drive, tell the BIOS to load the OS from tape, and restore that sucker to disk. I don't want to have to do partial installs, booting from floppy/CD, or any of that crap. Load and go is what I want. Once you've been able to restore a full system image from tape, you'll wonder why all vendors don't offer that function.

--
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:19 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:22 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave.
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:24 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order,
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 11:04 · Score: 0

Hmmm...I'm no SA, but I've known a number over them over the years, and I've nearly always heard the same solution. Maybe it runs in certain circles or is a myth perpetuated:

I thought the reasons disks stop spinning after LONG uptimes were not specifically due to disk failure but because of materials and spindle issues. When the disks spin that long, the spindles line up very well, and when you stop, well, they essentially polymerize and, well, chemically bond.

When you reapply power, the power and current is essentially too weak to break the bond.

You solve this by, oddly and it sounds pretty damn funny, gently dropping the disks (from a sane height, onto a hard surface, like dropping a corner 6" from a tabletop). The forces from the drop breaks the bond. You can reapply power and they'll spin up.

btw, most SAs know how to apply backups.
Re:I'd agree, but by JLester · 2003-07-13 11:40 · Score: 1

I don't understand why you think rebooting every 30 days would keep that drive from still failing? That small amount of time to reboot is not going to keep the driving from failing at about the same time it would have if it were never rebooted.

I do agree that reboots will take care of the other things in your post, but it won't save drives.

Jason

--
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 12:08 · Score: 0

"Nogirlphrenia" ? Not quite. I'm afraid the word you are looking for with regard to BSD is
necrophilia: the obsession with and usually erotic interest in or stimulation by corpses . . .
You see, once you cut through all the hype and chatter you find at the bottom of it all that *BSD is dying
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 15:41 · Score: 0

Yeah, but you are assuming that they have a single server that is creating the 100% uptime reported. With HA clusters for the servers, they may not have a single server that is up for more than 5 minutes at a time. As long as everything is syncronized between the servers properly, there is nothing to indicate that every one of their servers is up consistently.
Re:I'd agree, but by vuud · 2003-07-13 17:01 · Score: 1

I checked quickly and saw that there was no mention that this represented one box running continuously. What's to say that they don't have mirrored systems? Maybe they have two boxes in tandem... Patch one up, transfer the system over and bring down the other one for overhaul.
Re:I'd agree, but by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 19:53 · Score: 0

Because, as we all know, the chicks go wild for accepted slashdot stories.
Re:I'd agree, but by bobbozzo · 2003-07-14 08:55 · Score: 1

Your point about backups is valid, but I don't see what uptime length has to do with the probability of the disks not spinning back up.

--
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Re:I'd agree, but by r_j_prahad · 2003-07-17 05:12 · Score: 1

2) my fav, the disks stop spinning.

If the disks on my server stop spinning, I know about it within 5 minutes. I have a daemon that touches a file on every physical spindle I have configured and if it doesn't read back the same data off the raw device then all hell breaks loose. SteelEye's Lifekeeper used to do something like this on our big UNIX clusters but it wasn't available for Linux when I wrote my version.

Anyway, there's ways to prevent all disaster scenarios... most of 'em usually discovered just after an unpredictable disaster occurs, of course.

Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:27 · Score: 5, Informative

According to Netcraft,

Intriguingly, all of the Top 5 placed sites run the FreeBSD operating system

I'm curious over the choice of the word "Intriguingly." My experience with FreeBSD has shown it to be nothing but rock-solid as a server OS. I actually prefer it over Linux these days (I was a RH-zealot for a couple of years until I "saw the light," as it were).

What would be intriguing were if Windows had nabbed the top 5 spots...

Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Blikank · 2003-07-13 01:30 · Score: 1, Informative

If you look at the chart, 2 of the top 5 ARE running Windows 2000.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by FerociousFerret · 2003-07-13 01:37 · Score: 1

If you look at the chart, 2 of the top 5 ARE running Windows 2000.
What chart are you looking at???
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Alan+Cox · 2003-07-13 01:37 · Score: 4, Informative

I don't see anything intriguing there. The Linux clock wraps at 497 days. It's also not "intriguing" as such because FreeBSD is an extremely stable OS.

I am suprised AIX didn't show up in the top five I must admit
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Medieval_Thinker · 2003-07-13 01:41 · Score: 1

Look at the actual chart http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters

It is updated every 15 minutes, and the screenshot is dated.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by SoSueMe · 2003-07-13 01:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

In the bottom 10 (of 50), 1=HP-UX, 2=Linux, 3=Windows, 4=Solaris.
I think it is more the admins, rather than the OS's.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:46 · Score: 0

I believe what is 'intriguing' is that many of the tools that are reasonably expected on a webhosting system tend to run more slowly and less compatibly because of Linux emulation -- on OpenBSD, for example, I noticed that vim took twice as long to load than under Linux 2.4.19 (what I had swapped the system from temporarily before switching back to Linux).
In other words, "doctor, it hurts when I do this." So turn Linux emulation off, or better yet, recompile the kernel without that support.

Vim runs just fine compiled natively for *BSD, and I have yet to encounter anything on a web server that requires Linux emulation support. It can be a nice feature for a development machine, but it's got no business being enabled on a production web server.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:50 · Score: 1, Informative

As of right now (7:49 AM Mountain Time), 4 out of the top 10 are Win2k.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by qortra · 2003-07-13 01:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

I guess I'll have to disagree with both you and AC. I think it's intriguing if any particular OS nabs all top 5 spots; I (and apparently the folks at Netcraft) imagine there would be more variety at the top. There are many other very stable OSes out there, such as some flavours of GNU/Linux (read "Debian-Stable"). But all that to say that I'd rather not nitpick Netcraft about one particular word. In the past they have chosen to put a humorous twist on server uptime data (an otherwise dry topic), and I have always liked the result.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by swb · 2003-07-13 02:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am suprised AIX didn't show up in the top five I must admit

Are there hosting providers using AIX in their hosting environments? I would think that RS6000s would be just too expensive in comparison to blades or generic 1 or 2U x86s for hosting environments.

I'm sure there's some popularity in ASP environments where you're providing an entire application (interface, DB, logic, etc), but for basic hosting it sounds like it'd be unaffordable to use RS6000.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:08 · Score: 0

You misread the sentence. Intriguingly refered to the statistic that the top 10 systems came from all over the industry, not that it was intriguing that FreeBSD is reliable.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by eht · 2003-07-13 02:14 · Score: 4, Informative

Blame everything on the Linux clock wrapping at 497 days, well you might want to have that fixed eh?

I'd like it fixed so it can stopped being used as an excuse.

Or you could read the article and find it has nothing to do with anyone's uptime clock, it's by failed req% in the month of June, but that would be too hard.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:23 · Score: 0

I would think it's just meant as: despite the popularity and push on the Linux front, FreeBSD is still the OS behind these high traffic sites.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by eht · 2003-07-13 03:20 · Score: 1

Underrated? what the heck? overrated maybe, or flamebait.

The mods are on crack again.

It's not really very informative either, I just happened to read the linked article and look at some chart there, what's insightful these days? realizing that in most cases two plus two does in fact actually equal four?
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:50 · Score: 0

That makes much more sense than 2 of the top 5 running Windows 98.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:10 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing but nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by FattMattP · 2003-07-13 05:05 · Score: 1

I'd like it fixed so it can stopped being used as an excuse.
So submit your patch already.

--
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:14 · Score: 0

One thing is certain; no matter how hard you cook the stats, overall *BSD is colossal failure. So why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Svenne · 2003-07-13 05:59 · Score: 1

So that's it! It thought it was weird that this server started over from 0.

--

Slagborr
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Tokerat · 2003-07-13 07:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Linux clock wraps at 497 days.
For those of us who are slightly less familiar with Linux (heh), could you explain (or provide a link to a page explaining) why this happens, and what the reason for it still happening that way is?

Honestly not a troll or anything, just curious and I figure I can get an accurate answer from someone like Alan Cox...

--
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Admiral+Burrito · 2003-07-13 07:38 · Score: 3, Funny

*BSD is dying

As usual, slashdotters aren't reading the article.

The article says that BSD-based services are very reliable, and tend to not die. And it is a Netcraft article, so...

Netcraft confirms: *BSD is not dying.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Arandir · 2003-07-13 07:57 · Score: 1

But he's not the one using this "bug" as an excuse.

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by eht · 2003-07-13 08:51 · Score: 1

Correct and thank you.

I don't use Linux (I've got FreeBSD on my servers and firewall, and Windows on my desktop, it works for me, it may not be your cake), nor am I a real programmer(I can do some stuff, and I understand the basics, but I don't really put anything into practice).

Come on people how hard can it be, this has been a known problem for quite some time. I fully realize it is not a major problem, but if you're not willing to fix it, then at least stop using it as an excuse.

Of course I could be wrong and it's a horribly complicated mess to fix.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:57 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let us keep to the facts, and have a look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by FattMattP · 2003-07-13 09:14 · Score: 2, Informative

But he's not the one using this "bug" as an excuse.
An excuse for what? Netcraft checks your uptime by pinging your machine. They aren't going to be able to log into your machine and check the internal counter that keeps track of your uptime. The limit in the Linux counter has no relevance here.

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Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 09:31 · Score: 0

I am suprised AIX didn't show up in the top five I must admit

I'm not. Large corporations don't want to be sued, its that simple. SCO has shown that IBM has misappropriated their licensed Unix source code, and that means IBM has no right to sell AIX at all. If ISPs were that unconcerned about intellectual property issues, they'd all be running pirated copies of Windows 2000 Server, which is a superior platform anyway.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 10:25 · Score: 0

I guess we all can agree on one thing, that overall *BSD is indeed a failure. But why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by nacturation · 2003-07-13 12:41 · Score: 2, Informative
An excuse for what? Netcraft checks your uptime by pinging your machine. They aren't going to be able to log into your machine and check the internal counter that keeps track of your uptime. The limit in the Linux counter has no relevance here.
Wrong! From the Netcraft page:
Which operating systems provide uptime information ?
Operating systems we can usually work out uptimes for are:
- BSD/OS
- FreeBSD [but not the default configuration in versions 3 to 4.3]
- HP-UX [recent versions]
- IRIX
- Linux 2.1 kernel and later, except on Alpha processor based systems
- Solaris 2.6 and later
- Windows 2000
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows XP
Operating systems that do not provide uptime information include;
- AIX
- AS/400
- Compaq Tru64
- DG/UX
- MacOS
- MacOSX
- NT3/Windows 95
- NT4/Windows 98
- NetBSD/OpenBSD
- NetWare
- OS/2
- OS/390
- SCO UNIX
- SunOS 4
- VM
Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days.
Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ?
The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone.
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Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by Arandir · 2003-07-13 17:50 · Score: 1

For those of you asleep under a rock, let me present this "excuse" in a nutshell:

1) Someone remarks that FreeBSD and BSD/OS dominate the Netcraft uptime rankings.

2) Linux advocate offers the excuse "but the uptime counter thingy rolls over after 497 days, so the Netcraft rankings are not fair."

If you look at this thread from the beginning, you'll see that eht wasn't bitching about the Netcraft rankings, but bitching about the people bitching about Netcraft rankings. And if you had bothered reading his damn post, you would have seen that eht actually read the article, which wasn't about uptime at all!

--
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by PorcupineMaster · 2003-07-13 20:58 · Score: 1

For me FreeBSD is much better in every way than Linux, I have used Mandrake and RH, admitidly not exactly the best distros, but I was new to it, never really got that into Linux either. FreeBSD on the other hand, it knocked the socks off me, it was powerful it was clean, and I found myself wanting to use it more than windows, something that Linux never managed to do to me.

I find myself fiddling for hours with FreeBSD and virtually as soon as a new version comes out despite my 56k modem I download it, I would still call myself a beginner in the Linux/"Unix" world but I could never see myself going for any other OS for a server than FreeBSD.
Re:Before the *BSD is Dying trolls start... by eht · 2003-07-14 04:02 · Score: 1

Which of course makes my posts offtopic, but the crack mods vote it underrated and and informative.

I think one thing that could possibly fix this is by giving almost everyone mod points.

Then again I think the us congress might possibly be fixed by having 100 times as many seats, can you imagine the RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft/Bad Guy of Whoever's Choice trying to bribe that many people, you'd get yahoos from the right, yahoos from the left and enough moderates to actually get the will of the people done.

Hmmm... by Dark+Lord+Seth · 2003-07-13 01:28 · Score: 5, Funny

I don't know, I think http://localhost/ is the fastest, most reliable of them all instead. Shit content though...

--
Hate me!

Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:53 · Score: 0

Slashdotted already! "Connection refused when attempting to contact localhost."

Does anyone have a mirror? ....mods, this is a joke.

What about... by Mensa+Babe · 2003-07-13 01:29 · Score: 2, Funny

...SCO?

--
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)

Re:What about... by archen · 2003-07-13 01:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

Actually I'm interested in SCO too. Having had the misfortune being an admin for a SCO system for 2 months (before we switched to Linux) I wonder if anyone seriously would use SCO as a webserver. If s o I'd really like to hear about their experiences =P

Netcraft has all sorts of interesting data to dig through. But no place just too look for a total list of OS hosts. Also sort of neat to see what domains interest people the most. (Like #5 linuxsucks.org running on Linux)
Re:What about... by SlashdotLemming · 2003-07-13 02:21 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Wow, is this the first 'SCO' post with negative mods?
Currently the parent score is:
50% Offtopic
50% Funny

Is this a turning point for SCO posts?!?
Will SCO continue to guarentee funny mods, or will it begin to generate offtopic, troll, and overrated?!?
Stay tuned boys and girls for the next episode of Slashdot!
Re:What about... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:13 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

Win2k by mr.henry · 2003-07-13 01:29 · Score: 1, Informative

12 of the Top 50 are running Windows 2000. Of those, half of them had outages. (Compared to 15 Linux, and of those, 5 outages).

I hate MS, but man, Win2k is a great operating system.

Re:Win2k by Professor+Bluebird · 2003-07-13 01:32 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Too bad some versions of Windows automagically crash after 40 days or so of uptime.
Re:Win2k by Jailbrekr · 2003-07-13 01:35 · Score: 1

Its Windows 98, its 49 days, and if a hosting company is using Win98 as a production hosting server they should be prevented from breeding.

--
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Re:Win2k by Thoguth · 2003-07-13 01:52 · Score: 1

You know, Windows2000 appears to be overrepresented here, considering how much more popular Linux/Apache are compared to Win2k/IIS. There are like twice as many Linux/Apache servers as there are IIS servers, according to this page.

Hmm, no, actually looking at that page I see it doesn't say whether Apache is running on BSD or Linux, so it's more like 12 IIS vs. 38 Apache (assuming that's what the other providers are running.) That would leave Windows somewhat underrepresented, but you gotta admit, that's still not a bad showing.

And whatever the admin of that NT4 box makes, he deserves a raise.

--
The requested URL /iframe/sig.html was not found on this server.
Re:Win2k by Mostly+a+lurker · 2003-07-13 02:42 · Score: 4, Funny

if a hosting company is using Win98 as a production hosting server they should be prevented from breeding.
Do not worry. If using Win98 as a production hosting server, they would be too busy problem solving to have time to breed!
Re:Win2k by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:30 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[ed.note, in the following text former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'

Fasr? Reliable? by phud · 2003-07-13 01:30 · Score: 4, Funny

Looks like netcraft needs to switch

Re:Fasr? Reliable? by Neophytus · 2003-07-13 01:35 · Score: 2, Informative

Netcraft says Netcraft is using FreeBSD
Re:Fasr? Reliable? by kilonad · 2003-07-13 02:27 · Score: 2, Funny

Netcraft says Netcraft is using FreeBSD

No wonder Netcraft is dying... ;)

While we're on Netcraft... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:30 · Score: 3, Funny

This is a pretty interesting link. Apache is great and all, but the dark side works with FrontPage.

BSD by grub · 2003-07-13 01:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm a happy {Free|Open}BSD user after switching from Linux about 4 years ago. I haven't had to monkey with Alice's patches to Bob's kernel mods to run Charles' software since. This isn't a Linux slam but with the BSD family, once you have a stable system it just runs until the hardware dies. In fact I only reboot my OpenBSD boxes when there is a security hole (you know how often that is!) or big upgrade to the kernel/OS that I want, not just the Kernel du Jour.

--
Trolling is a art,

Re:BSD by Moridineas · 2003-07-13 01:36 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm in the same situation. Use Open for Firewall computeres, Free for everything else. Stable and easy to maintain. The easy to maintain part is about the most important to me.
Re:BSD by IamTheRealMike · 2003-07-13 01:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

Isn't that true of *any* solid server OS? If you get it set up correctly then leave it, most machines will run until the hardware dies.
I personally don't know many real Linux production servers (as opposed to bobs personal box) where the admins mess with kernel patches - ever. They normally use a stable distro, normally Debian or one of the older Red Hats, and just leave it.
Re:BSD by TheRaven64 · 2003-07-13 02:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

In fact I only reboot my OpenBSD boxes when there is a security hole (you know how often that is!)
Yes, we do. They can't even go 7 years without a root hole in the default install. Pathetic ;)
The thing that made me switch to *BSD, however, was not the security or the stability. It was the documentation. Nowhere else have I found such a wealth of (well written) documentation as I discovered on installing FreeBSD.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:BSD by eht · 2003-07-13 02:16 · Score: 1

Everything else except the toaster, NetBSD goes on that.
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:27 · Score: 0

It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *FreeBSD is dead
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:07 · Score: 0

This isn't a Linux slam but with the BSD family, once you have a stable system it just runs until the hardware dies.
Linux is just much easier to maintain though. A couple times a week I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and I'm done. With OpenBSD I had to track patches and download source code and patch the source code, compile the stuff, install it, package management was a bitch, etc. I guess I'm just Linux biased but BSD seemed to just be weird. Linux was much more like Solaris (sys v init scripts for example) and is much cleaner.
Now, don't get me wrong, I use OpenBSD on my firewall, but I've been increasingly rethinking whether it's worth the headaches of trying to keep it patched (which I don't anymore since it's a pain). I'll probably just switch it to some dedicated firewall distribution like m0n0wall (yes, I know freebsd).
Re:BSD by parc · 2003-07-13 04:16 · Score: 0, Offtopic

At my work, we've got two kernel revs: the one that works well for our service, and theone Oracle deems necessary.

The one used for non-Oracle machines performs FAR better than the Oracle kernel, and is a patched -ac kernel.
The Oracle kernel is RHAS2.1, soon to be RH Enterprise. It routinely runs out of swap (on a 4G machine!), and has relatively bad NFS performance.

So, now you do know of a real Linux production server set that uses patched kernels. However, it's not a big admin nightmare, as we pick a stable patch set and use it for quite a while, 6 months or so now.
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:55 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Re:BSD by einer · 2003-07-13 05:31 · Score: 1

I would, but I require java.
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:37 · Score: 0

Let's not kid ourselves. While I agree with you that FreeBSD is in deep trouble, there is even more to the story than first meets the eye. You see, while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it most certainly is not the only BSD to be gnawed upon by this cancer. And yes, I'm referring to OpenBSD, your favorite OS du jour.
Allow me to elaborate. I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:05 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying,
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Re:BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:08 · Score: 0

It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. And yet why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Already slashdotted... by Trurl's+Machine · 2003-07-13 01:35 · Score: 3, Funny

And I am supposed to take *they* word on what is the most reliable technology?

Re:Already slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:55 · Score: 0

Actually I was able to view it just fine. It would only get /.ed if they were running Linux.
Re:Already slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:21 · Score: 0

It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes there is no denying that *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dead
Re:Already slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:46 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[N.B.: in this text former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you

OS is a commodity by nuggz · 2003-07-13 01:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

Although FreeBSD made the front page, it looks like the others are also represented.

To me this suggests that they are all capable, and the differences come from somewhere else, the setup and administration.

Re:OS is a commodity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:43 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[Note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's

Bzzt by Motherfucking+Shit · 2003-07-13 01:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you look at the chart, 2 of the top 5 ARE running Windows 2000.

I presume you're talking about this chart (the one linked in the story doesn't show OS), which lists the top hosting providers over the last 24 hours... Not for the month of June.

In any case, I'm a bit skeptical of the data. They seem to be monitoring the providers' own websites, not their clients' machines or sites. For example, the 24 hour chart shows Interland listed as Win2K... That may be true of www.interland.com, but most of the Interland clients I know are either running dedicated *nix boxen, or running off Solaris virtual hosting accounts at Interland's Communitech branch.

Regardless, I certainly wouldn't rank a host based on their ability to keep their site up. Most if not all of them serve their corporate site from a server unrelated to their clients, and the site (and server itself) are rarely messed with. This is especially true with shared/dedicated hosts.

--
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.

Re:Bzzt by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:25 · Score: 0

Actually, the OS split at Interland is about 50/50 with a little more on the Windows side than the UNIX side.
Re:Bzzt by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:45 · Score: 0

>If you look at the chart, 2 of the top 5 ARE >running Windows 2000.
Read this carefully: The top 5 use FreeBSD TCP/IP stacks.
Re:Bzzt by LooseChanj · 2003-07-13 03:02 · Score: 1

ITHM "top 10".

--
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Re:Bzzt by Cthefuture · 2003-07-13 03:23 · Score: 1

In any case, I'm a bit skeptical of the data. They seem to be monitoring the providers' own websites, not their clients' machines or sites.

That is totally true, and I'm skeptical also. They have Rackshack listed as NT/98, but in fact they offer servers of all sorts. My site is hosted on a RH Linux machine not Windows. Just because Rackshack's main site goes out doesn't mean any clients did (which I know for a fact has happened because once I couldn't get to the main site but my site worked fine).

--
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Re:Bzzt by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:49 · Score: 0

Not true, either by number of clients or amount of revenue generated.*

However, it IS true that when you break down the inbound calls to tech support by platform, it's a 50/50 split. This is because the Windows platforms generate a far higher percentage of support calls, compared to the Unix and Linux platforms.

* I assume you're an employee. Ask around sometime and find out how much revenue the FreeBSD platform is generating. Then ask yourself, "If that platform's so lucrative, how come the support techs (most of whom, bless their hearts, use the terms "Unix" and "Linux" interchangeably) barely know how to log into it, much less solve the client's problem?" Contemplate this question long enough, and you will attain enlightenment.

P.S. BSD r00lz w00t!!!11
Re:Bzzt by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:15 · Score: 0

an Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Re:Bzzt by cmacb · 2003-07-13 09:36 · Score: 1

HAHA you got that right!

I was hosting my cheapo sites at Featureprice.com for 8 months or so before service started to suck. When my sites had been down for more than a day I moved. The featureprice.com site never went down though, and as far as I know they never used their own servers to host their own site! They are by far the most popular topic of yourhostsucks.com and I still go there to read up on their comedy of errors which include;

* continued downtimes for some customers as much as WEEKS
* setting up domains for customers with passwords of "password" or matching the domain name
* claiming that a major router outage for which they had no backup was an "act of god"
* not being able to pay their bills and selling the customer base to another company followed by
* investigation by the states attorney general
* the owner replacing the companies web page with a rant about how the world was out to get him
* mooning TV reporters who came to the office to interview them
* the owner locking himself in the office and sabotaging the equipment that he has sold to the other hosting outfit

It's better than reading The Onion!

There is much more to selecting a hosting company than which operating system they run.

Machine footprint by Gandalfar · 2003-07-13 01:40 · Score: 5, Funny

With footpring changing tactics I'll bet well soon see increase of Dreamcast based providers.

Newsflash in not so far future: "IIS down 5% Dreamcast up 15%"

Re:Machine footprint by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:32 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[Ed. Note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Re:Machine footprint by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:31 · Score: 0

In the balance, we must admit that *BSD is a failure. So why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:Top 50 by carpe_noctem · 2003-07-13 01:45 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Wow, thank you so much. With more posts like this, the /. effect is sure to be a thing of the past!

--
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:45 · Score: 0

I've seen secretaries turn P4's into 286's by installing stupid crap (Weatherbug, Hotbar, Gator, and various other useless 'enhancements').

It sounds like you don't know how to properly configure the OS.

AMERICAN PUSSY by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:46 · Score: 0

IS A MASSIVE CHEESEFEST.

Thankyou for your time.

Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Re:AMERICAN PUSSY by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:33 · Score: 0

Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is now gone, and a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:My trials with *BSD by fmaxwell · 2003-07-13 01:46 · Score: 1

BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Since BSD is free, please tell us what you have found that is cheaper. I'm sure that we would all like to get paid to take some other OS, because that's the only way that one could be cheaper.

I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes.

Did it ever occur to you that someone has hosed the BSD installation that you are using? No variant of BSD takes 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file on an 800mhz PIII unless someone has truly screwed something up.

Corrected URL by Medieval_Thinker · 2003-07-13 01:48 · Score: 1

The previous URL was for the past 24 hours...

For the data referenced in the original post, try http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performanc e/Hosters?tn=june_2003&reverse=0

Re:My trials with *BSD by Jellybob · 2003-07-13 01:50 · Score: 1

I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machines faster chip architecture.

What faster chip architecture? It runs on x86 and various other architectures.

Wanna see something REALLY funny on Netcraft... by Lobo · 2003-07-13 01:50 · Score: 3, Funny

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.sco.c om

--

-------
Bite Me Fanboy!!

Re:Wanna see something REALLY funny on Netcraft... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:57 · Score: 0

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.openb sd.org
Re:Wanna see something REALLY funny on Netcraft... by stevejsmith · 2003-07-13 03:04 · Score: 1

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't SCO claim to OWN the rights to Linux? So it's not really surprising. They don't have anything against Linux--just anybody but them using Linux without paying them.
Re:Wanna see something REALLY funny on Netcraft... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:48 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in this text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when

top 50 are typical by jd142 · 2003-07-13 01:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you look at the top 50, you get these percentages:

20% FreeBSD
26% Windows (NT and 2000)
30% Linux
22% Solaris
2% HP-UX

This is fairly close to the overall distribution of servers. It usually works out to about the same numbers. Currently, Apache is at 63 percent and IIS is at 26%. Which would be about right if all of the Windows boxes are running IIS and most of the unix variants are running Apache.

So the news appears to be that the top 50 most reliable providers are, generally speaking, reflective of the whole of all providers. Which means that it isn't just the server os that makes a hosting company reliable, it's the hardware and the techs. There's no magic bullet for uptime. You can't categorically say that one os is the absolute best. You have to include the technical skills of the admins in the equation.[1]

[1] You *might* be able to state that free/open source software is more easily secured, but I suspect that the admins running those 25 bsd/linux sites would tell you that their skills made a difference in their uptime.

Re:top 50 are typical by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 14:46 · Score: 0
While it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take to ease the hurt:
- deal with the inevitable.
- grieve for your loss.
- move on.
Never let your emotions get tangled up with something as silly as a computer
operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on.

Are you that clueless? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:51 · Score: 0

That is a standard mac troll, with the word BSD filled in. That is why the cheaper remark makes no sense.

I always laugh when someone gets taken in by it. Especially since it has been running for 2 years now on every mac story.

YHBT.

This is not surprising. by Krapangor · 2003-07-13 01:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

Main difference between FreeBSD and other system is not it's very good stability but the professionalism of the user base.
FreeBSD comes from an academic background and has much more high-profile users than any other system.
Even the very stable Linux system is dominated by hobbyists. The default installations of non-*BSD system are usually feature laden and sometimes broken. And note that stability of the kernel is not the only issue. If you fuck your configuration then you are fucked for good. It's a common misconception that a stable kernel leads to a stable system.
So, the pros and PhDs tend to use FreeBSD, not only for the above mentioned issues but also due to the clean design, tight codebase and modern algorithms. Note that e.g. FreeBSD was the first system with O(log(n)^2) swapping. This gives a double advantage: you get a stable system with a high-profile userbase. That's why we will always see FreeBSD on the top.

--
Owner of a Mensa membership card.

Re:This is not surprising. by swb · 2003-07-13 02:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

My feeling is that the main difference between FreeBSD and Linux distros is that FreeBSD is a complete *system*. Linux too often feels like a GUI glued onto an operating environment that itself is a kernel glued onto a bunch of utilities.

FreeBSD seems like somebody paid more attention to the components, and a good number are unique to FreeBSD and not GNU parts. Even the contrib aspects of FreeBSD (gcc, sendmail, etc) are well integrated and not just bolted on.
Re:This is not surprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:12 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *FreeBSD is dying
Re:This is not surprising. by Cthefuture · 2003-07-13 03:39 · Score: 1

I have to agree.

It's too bad someone has not made the effort (AFAIK) to create the same type of integrated, stable, tight desktop environment on *BSD. On the server BSD is pretty good(*), but on the desktop it's a complete wash. It's worse than Linux because it's basically the same thing Linux has (GNOME, KDE, or whatever) except missing some really great software (nVidia lags behind with their BSD drivers and the only VMware you can run is 2.x).

(*) Only pretty good because I find BSD to be a big PITA when it comes time to upgrade the system. "Rebuild world" still requires a major effort to get the system in the correct state, not to mention the incredible time sink it is. Even just upgrading individual packages takes too much time and effort (same reason why I don't use Gentoo). A Debian apt-get upgrade or dist-upgrade is hella easier and fast.

I would really like to see a FreeBSD package system that uses dpkg to maintain everything (with the same or better quality put into it that FreeBSD normally sees) and a really good integrated desktop environment (At least as good as OS X or BeOS).

--
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Re:This is not surprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:17 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Re:This is not surprising. by platipusrc · 2003-07-13 05:23 · Score: 1

Upgrading FreeBSD is pretty easy. There are about 6 steps to updating the base system: edit kernel config (optional), make buildworld, make buildkernel KERNCONF=newkern , make installkernel KERNCONF=newkern , make installworld, run mergemaster.
Those steps are fairly simple, and if you didn't edit the kernel config file, you can leave off KERNCONF=newkern.

Upgrading packages is super simple too. Install the sysutils/portupgrade package first. After that's installed, run
portsdb -Uu and pkgdb -fu
Whenever you cvsup the ports collection, run portsdb -Uu again. To upgrade a package using the ports, type
portupgrade packagename
To upgrade everything at once, use
portupgrade -a
If something isn't compiling for some reason, skip it with -x (On my FreeBSD 4.8 system, XFree86-libraries-4.3.0_5 doesn't build correctly for some reason so I'm sticking with a slightly older version). if I want to upgrade everything except XFree86-libraries, I just type
portupgrade -ax XFree86-libraries
If you don't want to build from the ports, but would rather just fetch the most recent version of something that is prepackaged, you can add the -P option. -P causes portupgrade to look for a package first, and if it can't find one, it will build from the ports. To prevent building from the ports collection, specify P twice.
portupgrade -aP
would upgrade everything that is a lower version than in FreeBSD's ports collection attemping to use packages first, and
portupgrade -aPP
would only upgrade what the system could find in prebuilt packages.

--
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
Re:This is not surprising. by TheLink · 2003-07-13 05:34 · Score: 1

You could do build world on one machine and install onto a few others. Or install on one, and clone it to others whatever way you prefer.

I like the make buildworld, make installworld stuff, because once I've synchronized source, and rebuilt world and kernel, I can be pretty certain that my system is in a reasonably consistent state. If anything goes wrong with the FreeBSD part (not my apps), I can easily describe to others what my system is. e.g. 4.8-RELEASE, and if I did a fair amount of tweaking/changes- include the kernel config file, /etc/make.conf file. That's about it - maybe the X stuff, if you run X.

In contrast with rpm here, rpm there, it's not as easy to keep track of what's updated and not, and whether you installed the rpms in the right order etc. The rpm stuff is about the same administratively as Windows stuff. In fact win2k service packs are kinda better administratively (as long as they don't break anything that is ;) ).

I wonder how it's like for the Mac OSX.
--
- Too many replies beneath your current threshold
Re:This is not surprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 07:17 · Score: 0

Minor correction, VMWare 3 works these days. No idea about 4, though.
Re:This is not surprising. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 12:23 · Score: 0
While it is certainly true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take:
- deal with the inevitable.
- grieve for your loss.
- move on.
Never let your emotions get tangled up with something as silly as a computer
operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on.
Re:This is not surprising. by nathanh · 2003-07-13 15:10 · Score: 0, Flamebait

So, the pros and PhDs tend to use FreeBSD, not only for the above mentioned issues but also due to the clean design, tight codebase and modern algorithms.

Actually my experience is that many people use FreeBSD so they can brag about it. They never say "I use FreeBSD". They always say "I use FreeBSD because it is used by PhDs and it's better than Linux and I'm way smarter than you and Linux is mainstream and FreeBSD is awesome because it isn't mainstream and elite people don't use Linux and your mother wears army boots". Thankfully I know that this sort of bragging indicates a FreeBSD *wannabe* who can be ignored.

Interesting by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:53 · Score: 1, Informative

What is even more interesting is that if you go to the site that has the actual to-the-minute results of this performance test, and not the static screenshot that the article linked contains, you'll find that FreeBSD is no longer all five of the top five spots:

www.nyi.net - FreeBSD
www.about.com - FreeBSD
www.nac.net - Windows 2000
www.interland.net - Windows 2000
www.inetu.net - FreeBSD
www.jumpline.com - Linux
www.myhosting.com - Windows 2000
www.expresstech.com - Windows 2000
www.hostopia.com - Linux
www.verio.com - Solaris

Intriguing how Windows 2000 has fluttered into a good number of the top spots.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters

Re:Interesting by spydir31 · 2003-07-13 02:16 · Score: 1

it seems to be sorted by failed req% by default, all the top records are currently at 0.0
also, the chart is avaraged over one month, the live on over 24h, not the same, right?
Re:Interesting by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:32 · Score: 1, Informative

Also note how Microsoft fail it! A company that makes operating systems completely unsuited for production servers.
Re:Interesting by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:17 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

Re:My trials with *BSD by fmaxwell · 2003-07-13 01:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

It sounds like you don't know how to properly configure the OS.

I agree completely. Whether someone likes BSD or not, its just assinine to assume that 20-minute-plus times to copy a 17MB file are normal on a PIII system. It's pretty damned obvious that BSD does not have slow file I/O when you consider that BSD variants are the OSs of choice for major hosting providers, massive commercial databases, Yahoo!, etc.

Re:free by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 01:55 · Score: 0

Sounds like somebody doesn't realize that if the ISP is making their computer bluescreen, it's probably not the providers fault...

Are you that insulting? by fmaxwell · 2003-07-13 02:00 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I don't read the Mac stories on Slashdot. Why not be more helpful and include a link to such a troll instead of being rude and insulting?

Since you were so "kind" as to point out that this is a variant on a Mac troll, I took the time to find a link to just such a message:

Here's the exact same troll substituting OS-X and Mac hardware=.

Next time, try to behave in a more civil and polite manner.

No particular order by nuggz · 2003-07-13 02:01 · Score: 3, Informative

And if you look at the data you see.
The top 40+ have no failed requests, and it is just minor differences in response times, and it isn't overly clear if they are even sorted by that.

Re:No particular order by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 10:19 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:06 · Score: 1, Insightful

Come on! This is a macintosh troll, not a *bsd troll! You fucked it up!

rant mad libs.... by RiscIt · 2003-07-13 02:07 · Score: 2, Funny

Let me save everyone some time...

"[name of host I use/used to use] should not have been in the top [number 50 or less]! I used them for [length of time] and I had [random number] problems over a [1-12] month time span! They are TOTALY incompetent and I wouldn't wish them upon my neighbor's dog's fire hydrant!"

#include<stdio.h>main(){for(;;){fork();}} by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:10 · Score: 0

You know your system's unreliable if it crashes when running that one line of c.

Whoa SCO using Linux !!! by figleaf · 2003-07-13 02:12 · Score: 1

Now that's funny.

Congrats, you just /.ed netcraft. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:13 · Score: 0

The uptime-reporting service is down. Ironic indeed...

Re:Congrats, you just /.ed netcraft. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:21 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[Ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

Were that true... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:17 · Score: 0

You might see a M$-based provider mentioned in there somewhere. After all, someone out there has to be able to make M$ reliable, right?

But I guess the proof is in the pudding, no?

Aaaarrrgh! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:18 · Score: 0

I just clicked on "order by" the.... wrong.... column

Rank Performance graph Company site OS

www.fasthosts.co.uk FastHosts Windows 2000
www.level3.net Level 3 Windows 2000
www.aruba.it www.aruba.it Windows 2000
www.nac.net www.nac.net Windows 2000
www.interland.net Interland Windows 2000
www.easynet.net www.easynet.net Windows 2000
www.energis.com Energis Windows 2000
www.datapipe.net DataPipe Windows 2000
www.chinanetcenter.com China NetCenterWindows 2000
www.expresstech.net Express TechnologiesWindows 2000
myhosting.com myhosting.com Windows 2000
www.btglobalservices.com British TelecomWindows 2000

Re:Aaaarrrgh! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:35 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It

Survay flawed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:18 · Score: 0

This survay is clearly flawed. From what I've read, they sent random pings from July 31 to June 5 to random sites and counted packet lossage and latency time. It is obvious that if the "experiments" were done 1 minute later the results would be completely different. Maybe even the reverse results would come out. Netcraft survay: Netcraft is dying.

Dunno.

Re:LIST DID NOT INCLUDE UPTIMES, JERKOFF by Marc2k · 2003-07-13 02:18 · Score: 1

You obviously were not looking at the survey, and instead probably at your own asshole. That's what the whole damn thing was sorted by, you can also sort by other factors.

This wasn't even a good troll. You need to go back to the Troll Academy.

--
--- What

You are either a liar or ignorant. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:19 · Score: 0, Funny

I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder.

First off, there are not 'folders' on a BSD box, there are DIRECTORIES.
Secondly, A 17 meg file talking 20 minutes to copy? - tell ya what....to prove you are not a liar or totally incompentant, why don't you tell us where this system is, just to see this problem. Because if you are right, you have found a bug....again, assuming you are not a liar or incompentant.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines,

Really? A laundry list? Would you not be willing to show this list because of your incompentancy, or because you are a liar?

Re:You are either a liar or ignorant. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:55 · Score: 0

Get this, and get it right: BSD is dying.
End of story, champ. End of story.
Re:You are either a liar or ignorant. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 12:58 · Score: 0

lick my cunt till I Orgasam, ok sport?

Liars!! by borgdows · 2003-07-13 02:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

Hey, some sites of the Top 10 are lying about their OS!

# www.nyi.net - FreeBSD
ok

# www.about.com - FreeBSD
ok

# www.nac.net - Windows 2000
ok

# www.interland.net - Windows 2000
LIAR!!
nmap -O www.interland.net gives :
TCP/IP fingerprint:
SInfo(V=3.00%P=i686-pc-linux-gnu%D=7 /13%Time=3F116 9B0%O=80%C=-1)

# www.inetu.net - FreeBSD
ok

# www.jumpline.com - Linux
ok

# www.myhosting.com - Windows 2000
LIAR!!
nmap -O www.myhosting.com gives :
Remote operating system guess: AIX 4.3.2.0-4.3.3.0 on an IBM RS/*

# www.expresstech.com - Windows 2000
ok

# www.hostopia.com - Linux
ok

# www.verio.com - Solaris
ok

There's something rotten in Netcraft kingdom! ;)

Re:Liars!! by Ascender · 2003-07-13 02:50 · Score: 5, Informative

You say that, but I believe that netcraft detects the OS based on responses to queries sent to the webserver.

Nmap, on the other hand, detects the OS based on the random-number sequence generation of TCP packets.

How does this affect things? Well, if you have a load balancer or firewall that forwards the HTTP connection to another webserver somewhere, then nmap will return the OS of the firewall or load balancer, whereas netcraft will return the OS of the final webserver.
Re:Liars!! by borgdows · 2003-07-13 02:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

Possible, but the HTTP OS header is a lot more easier to change (especially on Apache) than the seqence of TCP packets.
Re:Liars!! by FrozedSolid · 2003-07-13 02:58 · Score: 1

it's not uncommon that companies use embedded linux load balancer box'en in front of their servers

--
When all freedom is outlawed only the outlaws have freedom
Re:Liars!! by shadowjk · 2003-07-13 03:31 · Score: 1

Erm.....

SInfo... You wouldn't happen to be running Linux yourself on an i686 class machine, would you...

*waits for the bat of clue to enlighten the poster*
Re:Liars!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:40 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, and there can be no doubt, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Re:Liars!! by Ibn+al-Hazardous · 2003-07-13 05:26 · Score: 1

myhosting.com use an IBM RS/* running AIX as a firewall?

Damn, they are taking this firewalling issue seriously! ;)

--
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Re:Liars!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:51 · Score: 1, Informative

# www.interland.net - Windows 2000
LIAR!!
nmap -O www.interland.net gives :
TCP/IP fingerprint:
SInfo(V=3.00%P=i686-pc-linux-gnu%D=7/13%Time=3F116 9B0%O=80%C=-1)

you are an idiot. that i686-pc-linux-gnu is YOUR SYSTEM. NMAP GIVES THIS TO YOU WHEN IT CAN'T FINGER PRINT THE REMOTE SYSTEM, SO IF YOU SEND THE PRINT TO FYDOR, HE CAN TELL WHAT SYSTEM YOU RAN NMAP FROM!! *clue bat completed*
Re:Liars!! by Ascender · 2003-07-13 08:02 · Score: 1

True... but then again, why would someone change the HTTP header from an apache server running on linux to pretend to be IIS running on Windows? It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me.

In that case, it sounds like the linux box is being a firewall or load balancer, and passing HTTP requests to windows servers behind it.

As for the AIX one, who knows what's going on there ;)
Re:Liars!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:11 · Score: 0

We all know that it is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. And yet why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Re:Liars!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 09:11 · Score: 0

># www.interland.net - Windows 2000
>LIAR!!
>nmap -O www.interland.net gives :
>TCP/IP fingerprint:
>SInfo(V=3.00%P=i686-pc-linux-gnu%D= 7/13%Time=3F11 6 >9B0%O=80%C=-1)

That's not the remote OS. That's nmap telling you your own OS so that you can send it as part of the fingerprint info to their database because it was unable to even guess at the remote OS. All that last line tells you is that you were running nmap 3.00 on an x86 Linux box.
Re:Liars!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 11:19 · Score: 0

Yea... Nmap is REALLY reliable... when I fingerprint my linux box, it says AIX... and when I fingerprint my win XP box it says i686-pc-linux-gnu...
Re:Liars!! by bobbozzo · 2003-07-14 09:10 · Score: 1

1. Learn how to read nmaps output. nmap -O -p80 -v www.interland.net Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA31 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) No tcp,udp, or ICMP scantype specified, assuming vanilla tcp connect() scan. Use -sP if you really don't want to portscan (and just want to see what hosts are up). Host (64.226.3.126) appears to be up ... good. Initiating Connect() Scan against (64.226.3.126) Adding open port 80/tcp The Connect() Scan took 1 second to scan 1 ports. Warning: OS detection will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port Interesting ports on (64.226.3.126): Port State Service 80/tcp open http No OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal). ... then it shows YOUR OS version. 2. use an http viewer: $ client http://www.interland.net HTTP/1.0 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 20:58:05 GMT Content-Length: 12191 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQQQGQARU=AIPJFMLAECDCGHADGJHGNICE; path=/ Cache-Control: private

--
Nothing to see here; Move along.

Using BSD over faster and cheaper options by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:21 · Score: 0

1. What's "faster" when you're already bandwidth limited?

2. What's cheaper than "free"?

Three words of advice:

Head
Ass
Remove

Preparing for the inevitable by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:23 · Score: 0

*** sits back with a grin and waits for uptime.netcraft.com to be slashdotted ***
fastest way to ruin a company's uptime counter... feature their page on /.

Linux beats Win2k by TWO! by Kashif+Shaikh · 2003-07-13 02:32 · Score: 1

Linux is used in 15 of the TOP 50 providers which is in constrast to Win2k which is used by 13 providers! Yipee! Linux is winning! The "Ground M$" are dying!

Hey, "MensaBabe" by jvalenzu · 2003-07-13 02:39 · Score: 1, Funny

You misspelled superior.

its been /.'ed by Adler · 2003-07-13 02:42 · Score: 2, Funny

obviously they don't use one of their most reliable hosting companies...

--

Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!

Exactly. by Mensa+Babe · 2003-07-13 02:49 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Actually I'm interested in SCO too. Having had the misfortune being an admin for a SCO system for 2 months (before we switched to Linux) I wonder if anyone seriously would use SCO as a webserver. If s o I'd really like to hear about their experiences =P

Exactly. I personally haven't used SCO OS's too much, well not as a sysadmin at least, and I'd like to hear about people who have. But I don't think we should talk about it, because apparently Slashdot administrators find it "Offtopic."

--
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)

You missed the point by taxman457f · 2003-07-13 02:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you read the article you would see:
A summary showing the ten providers whose sites experienced the fewest failed requests and the fasest connection times during June

So this one is about performance, not uptime.

So the fact that Freebsd tops out on performance *and* uptimes is pretty amazing. What I will give you that you are correct about, is the performance is highly dependent on the hardware and the skill of the techs. Uptime is not everything for sure.

"There's no magic bullet for uptime." Well if it *is* uptime you're looking for, the closest to a magic bullet you can get is FreeBSD or BSD/OS. 5 years is a damn long time.
essentially the top 50 uptimes ever, is fully dominated by BSD
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.last.html

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:52 · Score: 0

"I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machines faster chip architecture."

Come and see mine; my 486DX2/66 runs FreeBSD/Xfree faster than Win3.1 - I haven't even tried to run W98 on it 8-)

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:55 · Score: 0, Funny

Somebody give this AC a cookie for a successful troll.

Congrats. Here is some humor as your reward...

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey...
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me bitch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?

bloodninja: Ok baby, we got to hurry, I don't know how long I can keep it ready for you.
j_gurli3: thats ok. ok i'm a japanese schoolgirl, what r u.
bloodninja: A Rhinocerus. Well, hung like one, thats for sure.
j_gurli3: haha, ok lets go.
j_gurli3: i put my hand through ur hair, and kiss u on the neck.
bloodninja: I stomp the ground, and snort, to alert you that you are in my breeding territory.
j_gurli3: haha, ok, u know that turns me on.
j_gurli3: i start unbuttoning ur shirt.
bloodninja: Rhinoceruses don't wear shirts.
j_gurli3: No, ur not really a Rhinocerus silly, it's just part of the game.
bloodninja: Rhinoceruses don't play games. They f*cking charge your ass.
j_gurli3: stop, cmon be serious.
bloodninja: It doesn't get any more serious than a Rhinocerus about to charge your ass.
bloodninja: I stomp my feet, the dust stirs around my tough skinned feet.
j_gurli3: thats it.
bloodninja: Nostrils flaring, I lower my head. My horn, like some phallic symbol of my potent virility, is the last thing you see as skulls collide and mine remains the victor. You are now a bloody red ragdoll suspended in the air on my mighty horn.
bloodninja: Goddam am I hard no

-

BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?
eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I'm ready.
BritneySpears14: I like your music Em... Tee hee.
eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.
BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.
BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something

-

bloodninja: Wanna cyber?
Katie_007: Sure, you into vegetables?
bloodninja: What like gardening an ****?
Katie_007: Yeah, something like that.
bloodninja: Nothing turns me on more, check this out:
bloodninja: You bend over to harvest your radishes.
(pause)
Katie_007: is that it?
bloodninja: You water your tomato patch.
bloodninja: Are you ready for my fresh produce?
Katie_007: I was thinking of like, sexual

Hey, "jvalenzu" by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 02:58 · Score: 0

You are a genius.

Lamenting the dead: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:00 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

Re:Lamenting the dead: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-14 21:32 · Score: 0

The BSDs are effectively dead. Tough titty.

AIX for web hosting by macwhiz · 2003-07-13 03:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

Are there hosting providers using AIX in their hosting environments? I would think that RS6000s would be just too expensive in comparison to blades or generic 1 or 2U x86s for hosting environments.

I worked at a major telco ISP that used AIX. In fact, not only were the web services hosted on AIX, but they were hosted on a RS/6000 SP2 parallel supercomputer.

This sounds like overkill, and in some ways, it is... but the SP2 is, in essence, a very fancy rack. Each SP2 frame has a number of nodes in it; each node is a self-contained RS/6000 system. The major difference in an SP2 node is that it has a SP Switch connection. The SP Switch is a very high speed switch fabric that allows the nodes to communicate. Combined with heavy-duty software and fault-tolerant design, you wind up with a parallel supercomputer...

...or one heck of a rack system that lets you run the nodes as individual servers, or in clusters, with lots of bandwidth and control.

For a service provider that wants to lure people in with a low starting cost, and hope that turnover from downtime isn't too bad, AIX can be expensive. I used to dislike AIX, because of its reputation as "not quite UNIX." Once I had the opportunity to use it, I found that it really is well suited to many ISP tasks. AIX has inherited a lot of attitude from IBM's mainframe days. IBM's mainframes were used in "can't go down" environments. AIX has many features that share that design philosophy.

As for the cost... as with any major manufacturer system, there's the published cost, and there's the cost you negotiate. If you are buying a whole setup, you can usually cut a deal. Of course, if you're buying major manufacturer equipment, you're already committed to paying more than you would for a white-box open source system, presumably because you want advanced features that haven't made it into OSS yet, or you want support.

(I've found that IBM's AIX support kicks ass. When I'd call Sun, even with a Platinum contract, I'd usually get someone who'd do the same SunSolve search I already tried, then promise to get back to me some day. Calling IBM gets results... they will put as many people into conference as they have to in order to get enough subject-area experts talking to figure out the problem and resolve it, preferably on the same call. A far cry from "RTFM and then post to the mailing list!")

The only ISP task that I found AIX had trouble supporting was INN. At least at the time I was working with it, AIX had resource limitations that caused trouble for very large INN installations. (This ISP was working with a two terabyte news spool.)

Re:AIX for web hosting by AKnightCowboy · 2003-07-13 03:59 · Score: 1

I used to dislike AIX, because of its reputation as "not quite UNIX." Once I had the opportunity to use it, I found that it really is well suited to many ISP tasks.
Well, it's definitely not UNIX these days since SCO revoked it's license. That should make you feel even better.

Developer lashes out: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:03 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD

[note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's

Re:I thought *BSD was dying by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:10 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miraclecould save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *FreeBSD is dying

Re:My trials with *BSD by stevejsmith · 2003-07-13 03:10 · Score: 1

Would you please refrain from feeding the trolls? Thank you very much.

Re:Dead? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:14 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more terribly crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

MOD PARENT UP!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:15 · Score: 0

heh! that's a good one! (Score:5, Funny)

Survey flawed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:19 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is quite sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Mirror by Door-opening+Fascist · 2003-07-13 03:25 · Score: 1

To save Netcraft, here's a mirror of that page.

Re:Mirror by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:03 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD
[nota bene: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

Looking at the whole 50 by LooseChanj · 2003-07-13 03:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

I see the lowest freebsd is #41. The lowest Solaris 8 is #49. Lowest linux is #48. Lowest Win2k is #47.

Those are the 3 OSen which comprise the top 10, which has 5 fbsd, 2 Solaris 8, 2 Win2k, and 1 linux.

Totals for the top 50 are 10 Freebsd, 15 linux, 8 Solaris 8s, 2 'Solaris', 12 Win2k, 1 NT4/Win98 box admin'ed by a crack smoking monkey, and a lone HP-UX. (I know missed one somewhere, but screw it...I'm not recounting.)

Now, what does this tell us? There are FreeBSD users at the top and bottom. Same for Solaris 8 and Win2k. Linux too. OS doesn't really seem to be much of a factor. Hardware and network reliability I would expect to be more relevant.

My conclusion? The people who chose these things, along with the OS, and setup and maintain them, to land themselves in the top 5 must have made better decisions than the rest. That the people who chose the most reliable hardware and networks also chose FreeBSD...well, it only goes to show. :-)

--
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.

Re:Looking at the whole 50 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:57 · Score: 0

Linux is dying.
Re:Looking at the whole 50 by Mastoid · 2003-07-13 04:52 · Score: 5, Funny

No matter what you say, *someone* will disagree.
That's not true.

--
I had an argument...with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn --Linus

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:29 · Score: 0

It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will only be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dead

Operating system has nothing to do w/ reliability by chrysalis · 2003-07-13 03:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

IMHO the reliability of an ISP has nothing to do with the backend operating systems, especially when the study only considers the OS of the public web servers.

I'm sure that even a Win95 based ISP can provide a very reliable service. It's only a matter of redundancy.

On the other hand, the company I'm working for runs FreeBSD on its web and mail servers, but thanks to the dumb way things are installed and the lack of redundancy, a global uptime of 24 hours would be an all-time record.

With no possible single point of failure, with load balancers and correct usage of protocols like HSRP, service can be guaranteed even if some servers are continously crashing.

Have you ever seen Google unreachable? I've always seen it up. Although Google runs Linux. But they have properly designed their network for high availability. In an old Slashdot article, there was an interview of a Google techie who explained that if 1, 2 or 100 servers were down, it would have absolutely no impact on the service.

So at least for ISPs, I really think what matters is the skills of the network administrators. It brings another question : does the skills actually depends on the operating system they use?

Maybe. At least when you read mailing-lists of different operating systems, you can clearly see some common interests of the related subscribers. _This_ is really what makes differences between free operating systems. When it comes to reliability for traditional ISP services, either OpenBSD, Linux, FreeBSD or even Win2000 are quite comparable nowadays.

--
{{.sig}}

Is this showing which providers are reliable? by verch · 2003-07-13 03:51 · Score: 1

Isn't it really just showing if the providers own website was up? Thats not really a statement on the reliability of the service provider as a whole. When we have brownouts I bet the lights are still on at the power company..
It also means that the whole 'the most reliable sites' use *bsd thing is kind of silly. Most of the top 10 websites of providers use *bsd. Hardly means that most of the servers @ the provider use *bsd. I know that I have linux servers @ rackspace and NYI.

Re:Is this showing which providers are reliable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:22 · Score: 0

I concur that FreeBSD is in deep trouble. And while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer.
I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.

Re:Hmmm... Localhost... which one? by frostman · 2003-07-13 03:59 · Score: 3, Funny

Hilarious!

I clicked on the localhost link just for the heck of it, since I had forgotten which project was running on my laptop's Apache server...

And MozillaFirebird helpfully took me to:

http://www.localhost.net.au/ ...which is, in fact, a hosting provider!

Ghosts in the machine, I swear.

--

This Like That - fun with words!

this is great by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 03:59 · Score: 0

I almost died of laughter.

Thanks

Re:this is great by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 10:10 · Score: 0

Any time!

AC

That's great, but what about...... by echucker · 2003-07-13 04:02 · Score: 1

It's already been noted that the data is merely for the parent site, and not for clients. I think a "bang for the buck" factor of cost vs. uptime, or something similar would be more useful. NYI has the top spot... But what if CW or Yahoo (for example) give you the same features for half of the price? That would move them to the top spot in my book.

Re:#includemain(){for(;;){fork();}} by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:05 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

FreeBSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:08 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let us keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

YOU GOT SMACKED DOWN HARD, PUSSY-BOY!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:08 · Score: 0

He came across as civilized and smart and you just got a "-1 Flamebait." Ouch!

Survay flawed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:09 · Score: 0

Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Though the streams are swollen
Keep them doggies rollin',
Trawlhiiiiiiiiide

Rain and wind and weather
Hell bent for leather
Wishin' my gal was by my side

All the things I'm missin'
Good vittles, love and kissin'
Are waiting at the end of my ride

Move 'em on
(Head em' up!)
Head em' up
(Move 'em on!)
Move 'em on
(Head em' up!)
Trawlhide!

Cut 'em out
(Ride 'em in!)
Ride 'em in
(Cut em' out!)
Cut 'em out
Ride 'em in,
Trawlhide!

TRAWLHIDE.

Just cut the crap, Kevin... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:12 · Score: 0

Kevin,

I wish you would stop posting this crap and just move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Just stop this crap, Kevin! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:14 · Score: 0

Kevin,

Just stop posting this crap and move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Re:erm erm ... by borgdows · 2003-07-13 04:16 · Score: 1

excerpt from Gentoo Linux make.conf :

# Host Setting
# ============
#
# If you are using a Pentium Pro or greater processor, leave this line as-is;
# otherwise, change to i586, i486 or i386 as appropriate. All modern systems
# (even Athlons) should use "i686-pc-linux-gnu"
#
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

Stop posting this crap, Kevin. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:17 · Score: 0

Kevin,

Why don't you stop posting this crap and just move on with your life? I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Kevin, give it a rest. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:20 · Score: 0

Kevin,

I wish you would stop posting this crap and just move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Back off, Kevin. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:22 · Score: 0

Kevin,

I wish you would stop posting this crap and just move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Re:Back off, Kevin. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 13:20 · Score: 0

Consdering this crap has been going on for months, why don't you just file the charges.

Kevin, get a life! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:25 · Score: 0

Kevin,

I wish you would stop posting this crap and just move on with your life. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, but you gave us no choice. As it was, I spent a lot of time convincing Jon and Bill not to have you brought up on criminal charges. I even managed to get you a week's severence.

Instead of being grateful that they gave you a break, you have become obsessed with trying to sabotage their business -- but your *BSD is dying posts are just childish and silly. We move more product now than when you left. No one is cancelling orders because of your anonymous messages on Slashdot.

I think that you could still have a bright future, but if this keeps up, Jon and Bill are going to get pissed off and have you brought up on criminal charges. Is that what you want? How many jobs will you get when potential employers see a criminal record that includes the theft of company computer equipment? Jon still has the laptop that he bought back from the pawn shop along with the company's original purchase records for it. He still has printouts of the ads you put up on ebay for the DLT auto-loader and the RAID array. There are records showing that your badge was used to gain entrance to the building at 2:13AM on the day that the equipment was stolen. On top of the thefts, we also have logs showing your attempts to break into the servers using your ID the evening after you were let go.

Do you want to end up being some guy's bitch in prison? That's what may happen if you keep this up. If you think that your shopping mall karate classes are going to do you any good there, you are in for a shock.

Tim

P.S. Please don't bother with denying this, who you are, and so forth. This started practically the day after you were let go. The writing style and the Kreskin reference leaves no doubt as to who's posting this. (Like someone else is going to go to that much trouble to discredit BSD and then not sign their name! Get real.)

Re:Dead? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:26 · Score: 0

Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:Hard Times for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:28 · Score: 0

So why now? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a ashen death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

rackshack on windoz? ARUBA.IT EVEN LISTED??? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:30 · Score: 0

Whatz that chart built on? they show rackshack's running off win b0xes while almost all of their offers run off *nix boxes... but that could be ok. What really really stinks is that italian provider aruba.it is listed in the top list. Even if its just today's listing, In italy we all know the truth. Aruba.it has the worst service available in southern europe, with its cheap fares and cheap overshared windows servers they remain after years the crap they were, no support, uptimes that you can clean your ass with while investing in image *ONLY* They suck, ask any italian working IT you might know. Netcraft scripts must be under bad superman trips dated 98.

amen to that by DrSkwid · 2003-07-13 04:33 · Score: 1

I have my whole server backed up *on another machine*.

Not mirrored disks or incremental backups on tape

But a mirrored server so my downtime can be measured as the time it takes to swap the CAT5 cable from one machine to the other.

Thankfully I've never needed it but when the day comes I'll be ready.

--
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter

Re:amen to that by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 07:45 · Score: 0

Switching CAT5? I dunno, I think it would be cooler if it did it automatically, I mean what's the point of having a backup system if it's only useful when you're there?
Re:amen to that by Bruce+Perens · 2003-07-13 16:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Change the Cat5?!?!!? Why aren't you running heartbeat? You need never drop a single packet.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:amen to that by DrSkwid · 2003-07-13 21:56 · Score: 2

well I didn't mention that the servers are also physically distant so the mirror is actually where I am, 10 mins from the co-lo.

--
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter

Re:LIST DID NOT INCLUDE UPTIMES, JERKOFF by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:35 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the chronically beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:Hard Times for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:38 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could possibly save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:39 · Score: 0

That is indeed some funny shit

Re:your sig by TCM · 2003-07-13 04:44 · Score: 1

I don't think that's always the case! :)

--
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6

WHY CAN'T STEVIE WONDER READ? BECAUSE HE'S BLACK. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 04:50 · Score: 0

Death isn't pretty by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:01 · Score: 0

It hurts 'n' stuff.

Re:Operating system has nothing to do w/ reliabili by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:05 · Score: 0

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

BUT... by smash · 2003-07-13 05:07 · Score: 0, Flamebait

According to the resident slashdot 'tards ... FreeBSD is dying.

Take that, fools :D

smash.

--
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.

Re:BUT... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:19 · Score: 1, Insightful

It's fair to say that no matter how hard you cook the stats, one undeniable truth remains: overall, *BSD is a colossal failure. Now why did *BSD fail? There's the question.
Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Detailed chart for June by jtheory · 2003-07-13 05:13 · Score: 1

Here's the link to the page filtered for June, that lists the stats you're looking for.

The top-10 ranked servers look like this:
FreeBSD (x5)
Linux
Solaris 8
Windows 2K
Solaris 8
Windows 2k

Though FWIW, I agree with many of your reservations about drawing too many conclusions from these data.

--
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.

What is with all the by G00F · 2003-07-13 05:16 · Score: 1, Insightful

What is with all the 100's of anonymous postings about feeBSD/*BSD is dead/dieing. There are 3 or 4 different posts, but cut and pasted everywhere.

It is like there are people being paid to spam this site with anti-BSD.

*BSD is still being worked on, is very stable/secure, and is used proffesionaly. So quit with the propoganda.

--
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive

Re:What is with all the by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 12:02 · Score: 0

feeBSD/*BSD is dead/dieing
I can't speak for the other variants, but I do think fee BSD died a long time ago... ;)

But they wrongly detect OpenBSD as FreeBSD! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:17 · Score: 0

I would take netcrafts OS detection results with a large piece of salt.

You do not get a correct picture of what the OS is running just by studying the reply packets that a webserver sends whilst during a HEAD request by their spider.
Sites like [atomised.org] which run on OpenBSD3.1 are actually wrongly detected by them as FreeBSD boxen.
Of course, if you ran nmap in a more intrusive manner you would get more 'reliable' results but you would still get incorrect ones due to the way load balancers, (etc) work.

Anyway, thats my 1p.

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:30 · Score: 0

Oh please, Steve, don't be so cheeky. Yes, we both can agree that FreeBSD is in deep trouble. And yet while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer.

I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...

Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.

If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"

That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.

The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.

Re:LIST DID NOT INCLUDE UPTIMES, JERKOFF by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 05:45 · Score: 0

> This wasn't even a good troll. You need to go back to the Troll Academy.

Got you, didn't he?...

Re:LIST DID NOT INCLUDE UPTIMES, JERKOFF by Marc2k · 2003-07-13 06:12 · Score: 1

No. Not at all. It wasn't a troll-baiting (which is what it aimed for), no one figured that what he was saying was true. If you can't pass off half-truths in troll, then at least be blindingly blatant about it.

See comment above yours for good trolling tactics. Re-trolling is tops in my book.

--
--- What

Re:Learning from our failures: What *BSD can teach by metalix · 2003-07-13 06:58 · Score: 1

...but it still kicked ass globally in reliability?

Too Close to Call by GoRK · 2003-07-13 07:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

When you start getting into the territory of best uptime and fastest response between all network providers in the entire world, the game simply becomes too close to call, and the ordering of the hosts becomes simply the luck of the draw (that's why not one month of this set of NetCraft statistics is very consistent with any other month) Without monitoring statistics from both inside and outside for all these networks, it is virtually impossible to rank them all.

Just because some provider responds to a DNS or web query 1ms faster than the next guy doesn't mean they are a more reliable provider. Maybe they just have fewer customers and, thus, a little bit smaller DNS database or more room to 'spread out' the users between different machines. I know netcraft monitors from various geographical and network-isolated locations on the Internet, but the law of averages doesn't help them much here. Say they monitor from 100 hosts and one of those 100 hosts has a "connection reset by peer" type TCP (RST) error due to a local router (ie not the provider's problem) doing a DNS query and it logs a time of 100ms instead of 15ms and one failed attempt? It might not happen to the other guy's host monitored even 200ms later.

Netcraft would have to be monitoring from very large numbers of machines (100,000+) to even come close to being able to tell the difference between these networks from outside. I have a feeling most all of them on the list are very good and reliable, and aside from uptime, reliability means more than the response time of your DNS or web servers. No matter what OS or network gear you use, when you introduce redundancy and failover, you necessarily introduce more equipment and more complexity that will slow things down an inconsequential amount at the gain of another '9' or whatnot.

Anyway, the point is, don't take the order of this list too seriously. The fact that any company is on the list means they have made a serious effort to provide a good and reliable network.

~GoRK

Re:Too Close to Call by josepha48 · 2003-07-13 07:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

If you look at this data over a period of time, like a year, you start to see a trend. I'm not sure what that trend would be, but, when you start to think about whose running what, (yahoo = FreeBSD) and then you add in cost (FreeBSD = free), you can then conclude that FreeBSD is just as good as Win2k. Thus if you wanted to cut costs in your company, using FreeBSD would be a good way to do so. Solaris and Linux also do pretty well. Using Solaris "could" be a more expensive solution than Windows if you buy a bog Sun box (yes I realize you can run Solaris on intel and get a small server for $2000).
The second issue that comes into play is what are they running on those OS'es? IIS on Win2k or Apache? Probably Apache on most UNIXish OS'es.
Then next it also must be determined things like what programming languages are they using php, jsp, asp.net, cgi, mod_perl, what? This also affects performance, as some languages are more effecient in the long run.
Lastly the number of servers installed and size. 1 or 500 will affect response time?
Yes I agree, this does not supply enough information, but it does seem to indicate more that ANY OS will do the job. The decision should be what language do you want to program in and what hardware do you want to use.

--
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Re:Too Close to Call by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 16:02 · Score: 0
Although it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take to ease the hurt:
- deal with the inevitable.
- grieve for your loss.
- move on.
Never let your emotions get tangled up with something as silly as a computer
operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on.

More like network performance by h3 · 2003-07-13 07:37 · Score: 1

I also don't see how this really relates to the OS used. As it states, 31 of the top 50 had no outages in the survey month, so the data ends up being sorted by %failed and response time, which I interpret to mean packet loss and ping time.

These are important metrics, to be sure, and I'm sure the OS used plays some small role, but I would imagine the network topology and the quality of the peering arrangements are much more significant factors here.

-h3

Hardware, anyone ? by fmedio · 2003-07-13 07:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

Interesting figures. But they don't say anything about the kind of hardware behind the OSes and different http servers. Nor do they describe the network topologies, routing policies or load balancing strategies used by the happy admins of the top-10 uptimers.

Yet, there is that embarrassing all-BSD top five. Tho I don't know how BSD or any OS can be of any help when you lose your storage subsystem.

Elegy for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 08:03 · Score: 0

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

OS & hosting?? by NineNine · 2003-07-13 08:14 · Score: 1

WTF does OS being used have to do with web hosting? I have a few co-located servers, and my provider is excellent, regardless of the OS's I have running on my boxes. Jesus, talk about a troll.

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 09:01 · Score: 0

D - E - A - D

B - S - D

Re:My trials with *BSD by stevejsmith · 2003-07-13 10:41 · Score: 1

Hehehe...I got a laugh out of this. I wish there were more creative trolls out there.

Who is Wal-Mart's host? by anubi · 2003-07-13 10:52 · Score: 1

When I loaded the Netcraft page that was referenced in the article, one of the links on the page referenced What's that site running? .

Being a strong follower of Sam Walton's business philosophies, I am quite curious of who Wal-Mart chose. Knowing how critical computing is to the Wal-Mart operations, they would be using the very best technology out there. So, I put "www.walmart.com" in the search window and got this.

WTF??? running IIS on Solaris????

I didn't think this could happen! They had a link there for the faq which goes on to state:

Why do you report impossible operating system/server combinations ?
Webservers that operate behind a caching system, load balancer, reverse proxy server or a firewall may sometimes report the operating system of the intermediate machine. Hence reports of 'Microsoft/IIS on Linux' may indicate that either the web server is behind a Linux server that is acting as a reverse proxy, or has configured the Akamai caching system such that the first request to the site goes to one of Akamai's servers [which run Linux], or as in the case of www.walmart.com has been configured to send a misleading signature.

Interesting!!!

--
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

Re:BSD - Remote Holes by buggered · 2003-07-13 12:22 · Score: 1

Isn't that true of *any* solid server OS?

There's always those virus/worm/exploit things. It's my observation that Windows has quite a few.

It looks like the latest FreeBSD (4.8) has a one and the previous release (4.7) had a few.

The last OpenBSD (3.2) had 14. The new version of OpenBSD (3.3) has been out for over 2 months and doesn't have any yet. That's pretty impressive.

Interesting that several of the flaws in FreeBSD and OpenBSD are the same bug.

Re:BSD - Remote Holes by buggered · 2003-07-13 12:30 · Score: 1

Oops! I linked to the wrong article on news.com in my reply above. The article I intended to link to is: http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1024178.html.

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 13:15 · Score: 0

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/har.php

Availability != Uptime by jjgm · 2003-07-13 17:03 · Score: 1

This was a report of request failures, not uptime!

It's quite possible to manage a server farm of many boxes that are regularly updated and rebooted without having a single request refused. Techniques like loadbalancing, reverse proxying and simple scheduled address handover make high-availability a reality today.

*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-13 19:20 · Score: 0

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is can survive at all (a big "if") it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Excellent Sysops by grc · 2003-07-14 01:49 · Score: 1

Did anyone notice that the #16 spot on the list for the month of June is owned by an ISP which hosts on NT4 / Win 98!! Now THERE are some good System Administrators!

Re:Hard Times for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-14 04:41 · Score: 0

Even though it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take to ease the pain of transistion:

deal with the inevitable.
grieve for your loss.
move on.

Never let your emotions get tangled up with something as silly as a computer
operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on.

This bitch be dead by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-14 15:24 · Score: 0

BSD be one dead sucka beeatch.

Re:My trials with *BSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-20 12:14 · Score: 0

"I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes."

"Did it ever occur to you that someone has hosed the BSD installation that you are using? No variant of BSD takes 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file on an 800mhz PIII unless someone has truly screwed something up."

Funny, because up until 2 years ago I ran 10Mbit *thinnet* (coax) to hook my computers together (I still have a few old boxes that have thinnet and AUI out that I run through a thin->10bt converter), and I could copy an *8GB* file from my Win2K laptop to my server (NetBSD 1.5.2) in under an hour. Something seriously wrong with that network if it takes 20 mins to copy 17MB.

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