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BSD Usage Survey
hubertf writes "The BSD Certification Group announced the BSD Usage Survey today (non-English version also available). 'This survey aims to collect detailed statistics on how and where BSD systems are used around the world. The survey is short- only 19 questions- and should only take a few minutes to complete. The survey covers usage of the four main BSD projects - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD.'"
Er, dieing? Something like that. At least it's what Netcraft is bleating.
The survey doesn't address personal use, which I would assume is a larger, more important part of the various BSD projects because with larger consumer market share, there is more of a push to develop drivers to support devices, and more reason for appliation developers to port apps.
I think that developing an operating system intended for business is a fine thing, but developing an operating system that can handle different markets in the event of a collapse of a market is better.
I'm took this survey earlier this morning, when I got it from a mailing list. It struck me as interesting that Dragonfly BSD is now considered one of the main BSD distros. I'm sure that I speak for a lot of Slashdotters when I say that I think that it's awesome that a small project like this can evolve so quickly and efficiently.
Kudos to the Dragonfly BSD team!
- dshaw
From the start Dragonfly has been one of the main distros imho. They forked FreeBSD and have clear ideas about how it's supposed to work and work hard to get it done. They're part of the BSD landscape now and I think they'll be here for a long time.
home
[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
OpenBSD is near it's next release, Hackers of the Lost RAID. The news item I sent in for it 3 days ago obviously has been rejected. Check kerneltrap.org for the news.
Dude, look at the number of comments since this "story" was posted. Face it: BSD is dieing.
I understood OS X to be BSD based, so I'm surprised that OS X is not counted as a distribution. I'd be interested to see posted why or why not OS X can be counted as a distribution of BSD; if it quacks like a duck, it seems like it should be included in a survey of this sort.
If OS X is truly a BSD distribution, doesn't it serve BSD evangelists to recognize and promote that?
--
$tar -xvf
I think the reason is that because it's covered already by Apple training and certification. Get Apple certs, and you've got Darwin covered.
I also don't think that Darwin sees much use outside of Mac OS X because people who are running Mac OS X already have it and a whole lot more, and people who would like to run Darwin on x86 simply have not had the driver support needed to make it a viable option.
The loss of Matt Dillon truly hurt the FreeBSD 5 development efforts. That's why it has taken up until FreeBSD 5.4 before many people can even begin to get a system up and running, let alone stable enough for production work.
However, FreeBSD's loss has thankfully turned into DragonFlyBSD. Once the initial work of rearchitecturing DragonFlyBSD is complete, it is quite certain that we might have a platform to replace FreeBSD for server and workstation tasks. DFBSD will be able to handle the massively multicored CPUs that are about to become prevalent. FreeBSD will not. But the virtue of technological superiority, DFBSD will trump FreeBSD.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
That's nice, now go back to your porn masturbation.
I always use FreeBSD for my Snort sensors, due to Snort always run better on top of FreeBSD than Linux.
For example, if you compare the output of 'kill -USR1 ' between Linux and FreeBSD, you will notice that Snort on FreeBSD drops much fewer packets than on Linux, on the same exact machine.
What good does an Intrusion Detection System do in inspecting packets if it keeps dropping packets?
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 the Amazing 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
... facts are facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
I'm missing CowboyNeal in almost every question.
Survey is less than a week old and there are at this moment over 2200 responses in several languages!
- Usage: FreeBSD 74%,OpenBSD 32%,NetBSD 20%,DragonFly 3%
- Number of companies with less than 10 systems- 1515; more than 1000 systems- 18
- Where used: North America 44%; Europe 46%; Austrailia/New Zealand 6%; Asia 6%
- Company size: Less than $500K- 1199; Greater than $100M- 117
Coolest 'Uses' comments:- Running large computational fluid dynamic model
- Building access control
- impress chicks on saturday night
- Specialized image processing, touchscreen office appliance
The survey will run through at least the end of September, so these numbers will obviously change.We can use your help. Join the mailing list and contribute ideas and expertise. We're in need of business as well as technical expertise. Let us know what you can contribute with the 'Contact Us' form on the website www.bsdcertification.org.
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey!
The usage is really only good for comparing BSD distributions between each other. If someone doesn't use BSD they most likely won't spend the time filling out a BSD survey when they don't use the product (and besides they probably won't know about it anyway).
I am surprised by how high OpenBSD and NetBSD is. I would have initially thought it would be lower.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Well, I'm not the original poster, but I'll take a shot at discrediting the current crop of MySQL benchmarks.
What will likely become quickly obvious after DTrace is ported to FreeBSD is that MySQL has a number of architectural issues that lead to poor performance on non-Linux platforms because of certain assumption about the system call overhead, scheduler behaviour, scheduling priority, and two relatively major problems that would actually result in even better Linux performance, if they were resolved. Everyone else would also benefit, although it would likely be proprtionately more benefit on non-Linux platforms.
The primary reasons for this are:
(1) because of LMBench, Linux has always valued low individual system call overhead, sometimes at the expense of other aspects of the system. Because of this, there's a wrong-minded idea in some of the basic design decisions that "system calls are free". Any place they aren't as or more cheap than Linux suffers disproportionately poorer performance.
(2) the Linux thread scheduler does not try to attempt to provide any degree of fairness in thread scheduling in a multithreaded program like MySQL; as a result, you tend to get individual threads running all their tasks to completion at the exclusion of other work, whereas other systems end up with significant context switch overhead as they attempt to provide the fairness that Linux does not. You could easily whack the FreeBSD or DragonFly scheduler over the head with a large "don't context switch while there is still work to do in the queue" mallet and get similar performance, at the cost of really scattered latencies, just like Linux(+)
(3) the priorities that are set via pthread_setschedparam() are incorrectly scaled for most non-Linux systems, and assume that all implementation have the same bounded range of priorities; this tends to actually drop the server threads in favor of the client and other processes on the system (even cron).
(4) the MySQL server associates a single thread with a single client, rather than using a statite and scheduling work from various clients to the worker threads in thread-LIFO order. Yes, the conversion from a per-connection thread to a work-to-do model would be difficult, but arguably well worth the effort, and would significantly lessen the apparent performance advanatage of #2, while at the same time improving Linux performance as well. When we switched to this model in NetWare, it got us about a 25% performance improvement.
(5) the MySQL client library pays a very high system call overhead, which is mitigated somewhat by #1; however even Linux would *greatly* benefit by batching the calls. This would be done by ensuring that the client library performs larger reads, rather than a 4 byte read followed by another message-type specific read, followed by a 4 byte read on the other end, and another message-type specific read on the other end(*)
Overall, MySQL benchmarks are actually pretty useless as a measure of relative system performance, and will remain so, at least until the performance issues inherent in its architecture have been addressed.
(+) At this point, the question "what about mean measured transaction latency and standard deviation?" should be occurring to someone to include in a future MySQL benchmark.
(*) actually, an even more efficient mechanism could be had here, given that client caching on the server side of things won't work because of the per-connection threading model; the model that would work would be a modified "accept filter" approach, to ensure that the client or server connection only received whole request/response messsages that could then be processed to completion, rather than stalling the work pipeline on partial packets in the face of long messages or intermediate fragmentation.
-- Terry
Although I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for *BSD
the carriage held but just ourselves
and our bad code in C
--
Using *BSD: beating a dead horse.
Plainer English: MySQL is broken.
Linux could score about 20-30% better on these benchmarks by fixing MySQL.
FreeBSD et. al. would tend to score about 50%+ better if these same fixes were made to MySQL.
I don't know how comparable the performance would be, but a simple test with a cache in the client library (one of the fixes MySQL needs) show about a 20% performance improvement for a BSD-based system.
Maybe you don't care about MySQL performance being better overall, but the MySQL people should.
-- Terry
*BSD Obituary
*BSD, 28, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Sept. 19, 2005. Born July 3, 1976, it was the creation of a cluster of pot-smoking hippies who went to Illinois and came home with a reel of tape. Rather than smoke the tape, they uploaded it and hacked on it a little.
*BSD was known for its C shell and early TCP/IP implementation. After being banished from UC Berkeley, it was ported to the x86 platform, where it fell into the hands of heavier pot-smokers who liked to argue. Soon, the project had splintered into 12 different Balkanized projects. Until its death, there was almost constant fighting in and amongst these groups, sometimes degenerating into out-and-out fistfights.
*BSD is survived by its superior, Linux, as well as several commercial unix implementations. It may be missed by some who knew it, although most of them are said to be mere OS dilettante dabblers.
A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Berkeley Chapel on the UC campus, with interment to follow via the burning of the original *BSD tapes and scattering of the ashes over the San Francisco Bay. The Rev. Lou "Buddy" Stubbs will officiate.
The family will receive friends from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the funeral home.
You know, this would be a lot more convincing if it wasn't a mere list of puff pieces and doubtable "facts." The real fact is that the market has spoken, and Linux is the next generation unix. *BSD has failed to catch on because of its own shortcomings and therefore is considered by most impartial technologists as "dead" -- shorthand for "not growing, not being adopted, saddled with legacy technology issues and endless community in-fighting."
If making this clear makes me a "troll," then by god, I am a troll. I guess in this era of Bush 1984-isms, calling a truth-teller a "troll" and a "flamebaiter" only makes sense.
I guess.
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
.005% of internet servers. A recent attempt at a face-to-face summit in Boulder, Colorado culminated in an out-and-out fistfight between core developers, reportedly over code commenting formats (tabs vs. spaces). Hotel security guards broke up the melee and banned the participants from the hotel. Two of the developers were hospitalized, and one continues to have his jaw wired shut.
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: X.org will not include support *BSD. The newly formed group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
BSD developpers refuse to serve, drink, or believe in the kool-aid. That's what!
Of course people who do surveys gargle with it and as such can't add home users to the surveyed because then the survey may mean something more than they care about...
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
IT IS OFFICIAL; WIRED NEWS CONFIRMS: LINUX IS SUPERIOR TO *BSD
*BSD is Dying, Says Respected Journal
Linux advocates have long insisted that open-source development results in better and more secure software. Now they have statistics to back up their claims.
According to a four-year analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University computer science researchers, the Linux kernel programming code is better and more secure than the programming code of *BSD.
The report, set to be released on Tuesday, states that the 2.6 Linux production kernel, shipped with software from Red Hat, Novell and other major Linux software vendors, contains 985 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code, well below the average for *BSD software. NetBSD, by comparison, contains about 40 million lines of code, with new bugs found on a frequent basis.
*BSD software typically has 20 to 30 bugs for every 1,000 lines of code, according to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing Consortium. This would be equivalent to 114,000 to 171,000 bugs in 5.7 million lines of code.
The study identified 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code in the Linux kernel. Of the 985 bugs identified, 627 were in critical parts of the kernel. Another 569 could cause a system crash, 100 were security holes, and 33 of the bugs could result in less-than-optimal system performance.
Seth Hallem, CEO of Coverity, a provider of source-code analysis, noted that the majority of the bugs documented in the study have already been fixed by members of the Linux development community.
"Our findings show that Linux contains an extremely low defect rate and is evidence of the strong security of Linux," said Hallem. "Many security holes in software are the result of software bugs that can be eliminated with good programming processes."
The Linux source-code analysis project started in 2000 at the Stanford University Computer Science Research Center as part of a large research initiative to improve core software engineering processes in the software industry.
The initiative now continues at Coverity, a software engineering startup that now employs the five researchers who conducted the study. Coverity said it intends to start providing Linux bug analysis reports on a regular basis and will make a summary of the results freely available to the Linux development community.
"This is a benefit to the Linux development community, and we appreciate Coverity's efforts to help us improve the security and stability of Linux," said Andrew Morton, lead Linux kernel maintainer. Morton said developers have already addressed the top-priority bugs uncovered in the study.
Here's my poll results:
FreeBSD:
NetBSD:
HatersBSD:
ClosedBSD:
InfightersBSD:
FlowerBlossomBSD:
RevengeBSD:
PissedOffBSD:
LINUX: 99.953%
Average Linux user: well-paid expert administrator.
Average *BSD user: angry unemployed D&D player.
C'mon, you all know these are the real facts.
Thus proving that any Linux distribution is superior to any *BSD. Time to switch, buddy. Jump off the boat before it goes under.