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FreeBSD: Not Exactly Dead
quantumice writes "It would seem that despite being dead and there only being six of us who use it, FreeBSD has clocked up nearly 2.5 million active sites according to Netcraft. So by my estimates that must mean that I and each of my 5 friends run 416 667 sites. That might explain my high bandwidth usage."
This story is posted because BSD doesn't generate a lot of exciting news. Well, that's not true: there's lots of exciting news for people who care about BSD. But none of the editors care much about BSD. They like Linux and MacOS X, and talking trash about MS and SCO. This means that they have trouble identifying the stories that actual, honest-to-God BSD users find interesting. But they still feel they ought to give us something, since after all BSD has an entire section on Slashdot. And I guess they are trying to encourage Open Source Brotherhood, not realizing that most BSD users would prefer not to be associated with most Linux users.
It's a complete OS.
It's not a clone.
Everything runs faster.
It doesn't mess up with your MBR.
It does not come with a particular browser pre-installed.
It's always fun to run FreeBSD.
And I guess they are trying to encourage Open Source Brotherhood, not realizing that most BSD users would prefer not to be associated with most Linux users.
Really? that's why every linux convention thing I've been too, has had a BSD booth. Or almost all conversations with BSD users seem to involve Linux in some way. Please. A win for BSD is a win for Linux and vice versa. Soon as linux takes over the desktop BSD will win converts.
Quoting the article; The reason for this is FreeBSD's deployment with the operators of shared hosting systems, where tens and even hundreds of thousands of sites are collectively administered as part of a single system.
Yahoo alone hosts something like a quarter million sites.
Perhaps this also explains the low media-profile to some degree ? 10000 companies running 25 sites each are likely to collectively generate a lot more buzz than a single site running a quarter million sites.
Which packages did you try to install?
...
Why should I be using a Unix-clone (aka Linux distribution) when there's FreeBSD?
Wrong! Not all apps are being developed for a Linux distro. In fact, Firefox is being developed in Windows and later is ported to other OSes. Apache is being developed in FreeBSD. Most Linux distributions (if not all) are using many stuff from FreeBSD and saying it's a Linux app and not saying where it comes from. Nasty, uh? GNU doesn't have everything so they have to take some userland tools from other OSes (*BSD mostly).
One problem with one Linux distribution? Wrong, gnorw, wrong! The latest version of the Linux kernel has a very annoying bug... it doesn't detect correctly your hd's geometry and messes it up so you can't boot up Windows. So using ANY Linux distro with that kernel will give you problems. Maybe RMS introduced it as he wants everything to be GPL... a monopoly in the open source world! So, like Nas says in his "You can" song, read more learn!
Well, there are FreeBSD developers working on FreeBSD and getting paid for that. John Hubbard, Poul-Henning Kamp, etc.
Linux: more unstable drivers, some stable drivers taken from FreeBSD, fragmented distributions, what it works on Linux distro A might not work on Linux distro B (even using the same package management like RPM!), full of politics, etc.
Virtually none of the FOSS apps are primarily targed on *BSD? Uhmm... once again, read more learn. It seems you don't give a damn about *BSD. It's OK, but please don't talk about something you don't know you. Thanks to BSD Unix and its friendly licence the TCP/IP (and the Internet) was born. Many commands you use on your lovely Linux distro have been taken from FreeBSD, vi was born BSD Unix, Apache was born on FreeBSD, XFree86 was born on FreeBSD, etc. Go get a O'Reilly book about Linux and you'll read... what's a Linux distribution? Linux distribution = Linux kernel + GNU tools + BSD tools.
Repeat with me... read more learn, you don't have to be gangstas,
"Ease of use" (also "user-friendliness") should not be confused with "short learning curve" or "newbie-friendliness". FreeBSD is extremely easy for me to use, as an experienced user, and that is currently FreeBSD's largest target audience. Moreso for OpenBSD, which gets many "too hard to install" and similar complaints. It is easy to install when you know what you're doing. Making it more intuitive to newcomers to Unix-like OSes is not a priority for them, because it is written for and by hackers/professionals, and a very large userbase would overwhelm the small development team anyhow.
Your other two points do seem to be true. Linux in my experience has in general been reliable for a long time, and a wider variety of hardware (especially niche hardware like particular laptop support, etc). It should be noted that although FreeBSD's security team only publically commits to a year's worth of updates, older versions than this are normally updated when they are affected. It is also relatively simple to upgrade FreeBSD. This definitely does not compare with the commitment of support for other commercial Unix OSes (Solaris, AIX, etc) however.