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Nearly 2 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD

Posted by michael on from the running-the-numbers dept.

Echo|Fox writes "So much for *BSD is dying. The latest Netcraft survey shows over 2 million active sites, and almost 4 million active hostnames all running on FreeBSD. Combined with the report that 5 of the top 10 hosting companies in terms of reliability were FreeBSD based, it's been a very positive month *BSD wise. Perhaps the most interesting quote from the survey is: 'Indeed it [FreeBSD] is the only other operating system that is gaining, rather than losing share of the active sites found by the Web Server Survey.'"

6 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Does Mac OS X count? by Isbiten · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does OS X count, when they sum up all the BSD machines?

    --
    I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
  2. FreeBSD is very alive!!! by horcy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm running FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE as a server/router solution. I've talked with linux users about al the amazing features it has and the stability it offers. All of have switched to FreeBSD. If you want to install something, you just look up your port in the ports list, you type: make install distclean, and you are ready. It automatically downloads it from a ftp server, if the first is down, it checks for a mirror site. It checks for all necessary dependencies and installs that too. I started with Mandrake linux and after that i'm in FreeBSD land. Never looked back since. Oh did i mention it has the Unreal Tournament and Quake3 server in the ports? One "make install" away for pure gaming haven for you and all your friends =P

    --
    Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
  3. What the summary doesn't tell you by ArmorFiend · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Indeed it [FreeBSD] is the only other operating system that is gaining, rather than losing share

    Only other than what? It turns out, if you follow links, that Win2k3 server is the other gaining OS. They go on to say this:

    Comparing the sites which are now hosted on Windows 2003 with their operating system in December 2002 shows over 42% of these to be new sites, 43% (68K) to be upgrades from other Windows platforms (mainly Windows 2000), 5% (8K) to be migrations from Linux and 1% from other operating systems.

    Microsoft will take some considerable encouragement at the number of sites that have switched from Linux.


    Woo, 1/20th of their new sales come from previously linux sites.
    *Makes hand-wank gesture*
    1. Re:What the summary doesn't tell you by ratfynk · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It just means that the number of windows software pirates has increased in proportion to the number of useless lame web sites. I have no dought Win2003 is the spammers Os of choice. If one looks to the Orient software pirates prefer Windows server software because of ease of use, and the fact that it is easy to pirate. I believe I have read somewhere that the pirate trick is now by using a false verification web activation, and the law authorities are having real trouble keeping track of the pirates.

      Gates might be having kittens but the 2003 licence sales are not reflected in the number that are poping up, like a weed on the outlaw net. This kind of software piracy is a direct result of MS pricing policies.

      Microsoft may be trying to encourage poor countries to use their software by giving it away , to influence local authorities to crack down. They tried the other root (American strongarm political influence) and failed. So they tried the stick now they are trying candy.

      --
      OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
  4. Enterprise BSD? by iggymanz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm involved in an Oracle on Solaris/sparc to Linux/Intel migration, and I can't but thinking why not also FreeBSD for the enterprise? It has the fibre HBA drivers for SAN, it has a volume manager, it has a very stable filesystem (moreso than ext2/3), it can run Oracle with Linux emulation libraries, has SMP, a fantastic TCP/IP stack, easy installation/upgrading of ports & packages.

    I never used FreeBSD until a few months ago when I tried to get my favorite, OpenBSD, up on a very weird 1U Intel based server I picked up on eBay from a failed telco. Versions 2.9 to 3.3 of OBSD wouldn't work, it would hang in the idle loop FreeBSD 5.x has been running fine on it (don't know why)

    1. Re:Enterprise BSD? by MattBurke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Try taking a sniff around the servers of larger, more clueful ISPs - They almost all use FreeBSD. Why? Because that's the place FreeBSD grew up. Linux has the hobyist hackers working on it whereas a high proportion of FreeBSD users/developers work in the ISP biz. It's just evolved into the perfect serious server OS.

      I've seen FreeBSD boxes (mail servers to be precise) with load averages approaching 1000. They were sluggish, but perfectly usable both over ssh and smtp. That was during a rather nasty spam attack - yet the boxes kept on working. You couldn't say that for a Linux box in that situation. Sorry, but it would be stone cold dead by then.

      Sure, we don't have all the twinkly bits that Linux users enjoy, but we go get one mother of a workhorse :D