9 ms·

> Windows laptops at that time had horrible command line experience and did not play well with Unix/Linux which is what most web servers were running on. In 20

> Windows laptops at that time had horrible command line experience and did not play well with Unix/Linux which is what most web servers were running on. In 2006, the main reason for Linux was to fix things Microsoft broke, which upon discovery Microsoft would break again, and Linux devs would again restore functionality to Windows networks. So your first point here is somewhat true, Microsoft did not play well with Linux which was moderately successful at playing well with Microsoft. In 2006, however, most webservers did not run Linux, hardly any did, in fact. Linux took over the data center about 5 years later. In 2006, most webservers were either IIS on Windows Server or, believe it or not, NetBSD. In fact, the vast majority of webservers globally, like 90% or more, ran NetBSD w/ Apache, and if not for fanaticism, this would still be true today, because there was and is absolutely nothing wrong with NetBSD that Linux fixes.

heywoodlh 4y ago
> In 2006, most webservers were either IIS on Windows Server or, believe it or not, NetBSD. In fact, the vast majority of webservers globally, like 90% or more, ran NetBSD Do you have any sources to back this claim? I've always thought that (perhaps mistakenly) by 2005-ish Linux was already fairly dominant as a web server OS/platform. Not asking because I think you are wrong -- I just would love to read more about this and couldn't find anything more than a web server survey from 2006[1]. The survey doesn't really mention specifics about any of the Unix-like platforms other than "Linux" or "Apache" (which I assume by Linux or Apache they are grouping all non-Windows OS-es together). My interest: I'm a regular Linux user with some FreeBSD experience who finds the BSDs super interesting and their approach very admirable. [1] https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/04/06/april_2006_web_server_survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/04/06/april_2006_web...
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I think this just isn’t measuring platform at all, though you can kind of assume they wouldn’t be much different. Apache could and did run on windows as well, though it was definitely an outlier case. But if you wanted to host php and you had a windows server you might wind up using Apache on windows, as far as i remember (and that was a use case for a client if mine around that time). I definitely remember there being platform horse race info from netcraft around that time as well, so i wonder what happened to it. God this brings back some… fun… memories: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/platform/windows.html https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/platform/windows.html
  - heywoodlh 4y ago
    > I think this just isn’t measuring platform at all, though you can kind of assume they wouldn’t be much different. I think you're absolutely right -- I just couldn't find anything from that timeframe with similar data points (probably lacking Google-fu on my part).
- Maursault 4y ago
  > by 2005-ish Linux was already fairly dominant as a web server OS/platform. I lived through it, and I don't have any citation, but this is incorrect. Linux did not take over the datacenter until 2011/12. In 2006, the main reason for Linux's existence was to fix the things Microsoft kept breaking, also, it was nice to revive older hardware that wouldn't perform with or run current OS versions. IBM actually tried to switch everything to Linux right around 2006, but en mass grey beard AIX system admins revolted, and IBM postponed the "migration." In 2006, Linux was just not mature or stable enough for big iron nor servers for popular websites, and Linux certainly wasn't dominant in any space in 2006, except maybe the dev hobbiest space.
  - pram 4y ago
    I don’t agree at all. Linux was fairly ubiquitous even in the late 90s. For example the entire line of Cobalt server appliances were Linux based, and they were a favorite in colos and shared hosting.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      I looked after dozens of those, both the Raqs and the Qubes, in the earlyish 2000s. I want to say, about 2003-2004ish? The Raqs got through fans like crazy, for some reason. I think I went through all of the servers twice in two years.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > Linux was fairly ubiquitous Linux was not omnipresent in the late 90's, regardless of a single server appliance. It was only in 2007 that any major hardware vendor (Dell, HP) even announced it would ship w/ Linux preinstalled. By 2008, NetBSD still had about 50% of webserver space with 30% run on Windows Server. In 2008, Linux ran maybe about 20% of Internet webservers, regardless of Steve Balmer's claim (remember how big the Internet is, i.e. it does not only consist of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft... that is only 4 sites... there were 31M websites in 2008, and most of them still ran NetBSD). A lot of file servers ran on Linux, there was big data being stored on Linux by 2007, there was massive interest in Linux, but Linux was not all there was, and Linux really did not take over the datacenter, where nearly all the hardware ran Linux, until late 2011.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  On my world corner, HP-UX, Solaris and Aix were still the UNIX workhorses we would thrust to put into production, with CERN being the exception where I used Linux in production. Yet, even CERN in early 2000's while migrating from Solaris to Linux (my office had a pile of pizza boxes to be thrown out), most researchers were using Windows 2000 with Framemaker/Word for writing their papers, with remote tooling to access the devenvs.
- athrun 4y ago
  I think it’s a question of perspective. In 2006 I think it’s fair to say that Linux was becoming dominant on the web, meaning that most greenfield projects would run on Linux from day one. Enterprise IT was another thing entirely. At the time I was working at an Enterprise Linux vendor and we were very focused on these “Unix to Linux” campaigns. There was so much to do, and a lot of convincing needed to happen to get these business critical workloads over (accounting, payroll, ERPs, etc.). Ironically, VMware ended up being more instrumental in getting Linux adopted by IT depts everywhere than we ever were. As well as Oracle with Unbreakable Linux, which was released that year.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > In 2006 I think it’s fair to say that Linux was becoming dominant on the web, I don't see how that is possible. Dominant means a majority. Maybe by 2009 Linux still only ran maybe 40% of all Internet webservers, and that is being very liberal. So even by 2009, Linux was not dominant. In 2006, Linux possibly had 2-5% of webservers... if that. By late 2011, Linux probably ran 90% of webservers. It didn't happen overnight, it took more than a decade after 2001 for Linux to dominate the datacenter. We ran racks of Linux servers in 2001 for back end processing. But our webserver ran NetBSD, like nearly all the other webservers, until about 2009. After 2009, perhaps all new webservers ran Linux, as hardware was replaced, but the Internet was still mostly NetBSD in 2006 with the rest being Windows Server IIS.
    - athrun 4y ago
      > Dominant means a majority. My full sentence was qualifying what I meant by "becoming dominant" here: "meaning that most greenfield projects would run on Linux from day one." In 2006, Linux was not powering a majority of the web, but it was powering a majority of the _new_ web properties launched that year.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      If you look at the graph of web server market share on Netcraft's site, you can see that Apache ramped up really quickly in the late 90s and stayed ahead of IIS until Nginx started making real inroads. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/ https://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-surve... The vast majority of these web servers were running on Linux. NetBSD was a very niche OS from about the early 2000s on, and far from common before that. Up until about '97 or so most web servers seemed to be running on NT4 or even Windows 95 (which was in itself a fairly terrible idea but they were simpler times).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wk_end 4y ago
"90% or more" ran _NetBSD_? At least say FreeBSD if you want to be even remotely believable. I challenge you to name a single major website that ever ran on NetBSD. Linux was rapidly becoming a successful free platform for web servers by 1998 - that's when the term LAMP was coined [0]. By 2002 "BSD is dying" was already a meme [1] on Slashdot - it was always a joke, exaggerated, but one with a grain of truth. Unlike the claim that NetBSD dominated the market! And while Netcraft never did claim BSD was dying, they did note in 2001 that far from having a near monopoly, "[BSD] has not achieved significant mindshare widely, as Linux has. This limits BSD’s successes largely to a few particular areas." [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) [1] https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying [2] https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2001/04/01/april_2001_netcraft_web_server_survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2001/04/01/april_2001_net...
- Maursault 4y ago
  The WWW was developed on a NeXT machine. But NetBSD ran the web for more than a decade, and I mean 90% of 30M webservers globally between 1994 and 2006 ran on NetBSD installations, not FreeBSD, NetBSD. FreeBSD started gaining popularity later. The reason is NetBSD was mature, incredibly stable, free and well-supported. Linux was nowhere in 1998, had zero support, was not stable or mature, and there were no Linux webservers serving the public anywhere in 1998. In 1998, Linux was barely a curiosity, a hobby, and it continued to have no foothold in the WWW until Dell and HP started shipping Linux installations in 2007. Linux fanaticism is compelling, but it can not rewrite history. Linux took over far later than you think. Linux started gaining webserver marketshare only by 2008 as a minority, quickly ramped up in a few years, but only by 2011/12 were most webservers running on Linux.
  - wk_end 4y ago
    I didn't ask about NeXT, I asked about NetBSD. Surely if it ran 90% of the web, you can name a single website that was served by it. Like, I honestly can't tell if this is some kind of bizarre troll. People keep asking you for sources for your incredible claims, and you just keep making them without a single reference. Where are you getting this 30M number? This 90% number? Here's another source: Red Hat IPO'd in 1999 on the back of a Linux operating system, per Wikipedia, "achieving—at the time—the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street". Pretty amazing for something that was "barely a curiosity, a hobby". Here's Netcraft in 2003, claiming a mere 2M sites running FreeBSD and describing it as a blip compared to Linux and Windows. > Although nearly all of the public focus is geared around advocacy of Linux and Windows, there is a third Intel based operating system, which generates a tiny fraction of the publicity surrounding these operating systems, and has a much smaller user and developer community. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/07/12/nearly_2_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/07/12/nearly_2_milli... Notably they don't even mention NetBSD. In fact, Netcraft barely ever mentions NetBSD. I get _two_ hits on their entire site for it. Pretty big oversight for something running 90% of the web! Here's a FAQ from 2001 from a commercial BSD company describing FreeBSD as "the most popular open source version of the BSD OS". Weird how, according to you, NetBSD was running 90% of the web up until 2006 but in 2001 FreeBSD was even more popular than it! I mean, I could go on and on. It's frustrating that I can't find any clear cut OS usage stats from that era, but everything points to Linux being a major player by the early 2000s. For example, Java - which was a very big deal at the time - never really supported BSDs, but supported Linux. https://coderanch.com/t/110571/os/Java-NetBsd https://coderanch.com/t/110571/os/Java-NetBsd You had to buy Netcraft's more detailed analysis, but in 2003 based on their previews it's clear they split the world up into "Linux", "Microsoft", "Other", "Solaris", and "Unknown". In the screenshot they show of one DNS owner, Linux was roughly 30% of servers, Microsoft was roughly 50%. Wild how BSD doesn't appear there at all! https://web.archive.org/web/20030425195510/http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/04/14/netcraft_hosting_provider_server_count_available.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030425195510/http://news.netcr... But why am I wasting my time providing these sources? I gave a bunch already, you ignored them and just kept making the same baseless claims about NetBSD's completely undocumented hegemony over the web that collapsed instantaneously. "Rewriting history" indeed!
pjmlp 4y ago
In 2006 I was still mostly using commercial UNIXes in production, with Linux for UNIX at home purposes.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
I'm finding that hard to believe, and I'm a massive NetBSD fanboy. In 2006 I was running about two dozen web servers, and only one of those was NetBSD - the rest were all Debian. The NetBSD one was my personal server, that lived in the water tank cupboard of my flat hooked up to my thumping great 10Mbps cable modem.
- Maursault 4y ago
  Why is it so hard to believe? NetBSD was a fully mature operating system by the time the WWW was developed. The serious options were Solaris, AIX, HPUX. They weren't free. NetBSD was under active development and runs on literally everything, plus it has pkgsrc, massive amounts of source code available for free that pkgsrc managed. Maybe I am biased because I already know, but it makes a lot of sense NetBSD was so popularly widely deployed for webservers for so long.
  - lproven 4y ago
    So prove it. Put up or shut up. Provide supporting evidence, and we will listen. Otherwise: nah.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Because I was running dozens of web servers in 2006 and was a very active part of the ops community, and everybody thought running a website on NetBSD was bonkers. Linux was already well-proven technology by this point, with a variety of free and commercial offerings. We mostly used Debian, although if people really enjoyed handing over money we'd put RHEL on for them.

heywoodlh 4y ago

> In 2006, most webservers were either IIS on Windows Server or, believe it or not, NetBSD. In fact, the vast majority of webservers globally, like 90% or more, ran NetBSD Do you have any sources to back this claim? I've always thought that (perhaps mistakenly) by 2005-ish Linux was already fairly dominant as a web server OS/platform. Not asking because I think you are wrong -- I just would love to read more about this and couldn't find anything more than a web server survey from 2006[1]. The survey doesn't really mention specifics about any of the Unix-like platforms other than "Linux" or "Apache" (which I assume by Linux or Apache they are grouping all non-Windows OS-es together). My interest: I'm a regular Linux user with some FreeBSD experience who finds the BSDs super interesting and their approach very admirable. [1] https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/04/06/april_2006_web_server_survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/04/06/april_2006_web...

stormbrew 4y ago
I think this just isn’t measuring platform at all, though you can kind of assume they wouldn’t be much different. Apache could and did run on windows as well, though it was definitely an outlier case. But if you wanted to host php and you had a windows server you might wind up using Apache on windows, as far as i remember (and that was a use case for a client if mine around that time). I definitely remember there being platform horse race info from netcraft around that time as well, so i wonder what happened to it. God this brings back some… fun… memories: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/platform/windows.html https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/platform/windows.html
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  > I think this just isn’t measuring platform at all, though you can kind of assume they wouldn’t be much different. I think you're absolutely right -- I just couldn't find anything from that timeframe with similar data points (probably lacking Google-fu on my part).
Maursault 4y ago
> by 2005-ish Linux was already fairly dominant as a web server OS/platform. I lived through it, and I don't have any citation, but this is incorrect. Linux did not take over the datacenter until 2011/12. In 2006, the main reason for Linux's existence was to fix the things Microsoft kept breaking, also, it was nice to revive older hardware that wouldn't perform with or run current OS versions. IBM actually tried to switch everything to Linux right around 2006, but en mass grey beard AIX system admins revolted, and IBM postponed the "migration." In 2006, Linux was just not mature or stable enough for big iron nor servers for popular websites, and Linux certainly wasn't dominant in any space in 2006, except maybe the dev hobbiest space.
- pram 4y ago
  I don’t agree at all. Linux was fairly ubiquitous even in the late 90s. For example the entire line of Cobalt server appliances were Linux based, and they were a favorite in colos and shared hosting.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    I looked after dozens of those, both the Raqs and the Qubes, in the earlyish 2000s. I want to say, about 2003-2004ish? The Raqs got through fans like crazy, for some reason. I think I went through all of the servers twice in two years.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > Linux was fairly ubiquitous Linux was not omnipresent in the late 90's, regardless of a single server appliance. It was only in 2007 that any major hardware vendor (Dell, HP) even announced it would ship w/ Linux preinstalled. By 2008, NetBSD still had about 50% of webserver space with 30% run on Windows Server. In 2008, Linux ran maybe about 20% of Internet webservers, regardless of Steve Balmer's claim (remember how big the Internet is, i.e. it does not only consist of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft... that is only 4 sites... there were 31M websites in 2008, and most of them still ran NetBSD). A lot of file servers ran on Linux, there was big data being stored on Linux by 2007, there was massive interest in Linux, but Linux was not all there was, and Linux really did not take over the datacenter, where nearly all the hardware ran Linux, until late 2011.
pjmlp 4y ago
On my world corner, HP-UX, Solaris and Aix were still the UNIX workhorses we would thrust to put into production, with CERN being the exception where I used Linux in production. Yet, even CERN in early 2000's while migrating from Solaris to Linux (my office had a pile of pizza boxes to be thrown out), most researchers were using Windows 2000 with Framemaker/Word for writing their papers, with remote tooling to access the devenvs.
athrun 4y ago
I think it’s a question of perspective. In 2006 I think it’s fair to say that Linux was becoming dominant on the web, meaning that most greenfield projects would run on Linux from day one. Enterprise IT was another thing entirely. At the time I was working at an Enterprise Linux vendor and we were very focused on these “Unix to Linux” campaigns. There was so much to do, and a lot of convincing needed to happen to get these business critical workloads over (accounting, payroll, ERPs, etc.). Ironically, VMware ended up being more instrumental in getting Linux adopted by IT depts everywhere than we ever were. As well as Oracle with Unbreakable Linux, which was released that year.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > In 2006 I think it’s fair to say that Linux was becoming dominant on the web, I don't see how that is possible. Dominant means a majority. Maybe by 2009 Linux still only ran maybe 40% of all Internet webservers, and that is being very liberal. So even by 2009, Linux was not dominant. In 2006, Linux possibly had 2-5% of webservers... if that. By late 2011, Linux probably ran 90% of webservers. It didn't happen overnight, it took more than a decade after 2001 for Linux to dominate the datacenter. We ran racks of Linux servers in 2001 for back end processing. But our webserver ran NetBSD, like nearly all the other webservers, until about 2009. After 2009, perhaps all new webservers ran Linux, as hardware was replaced, but the Internet was still mostly NetBSD in 2006 with the rest being Windows Server IIS.
  - athrun 4y ago
    > Dominant means a majority. My full sentence was qualifying what I meant by "becoming dominant" here: "meaning that most greenfield projects would run on Linux from day one." In 2006, Linux was not powering a majority of the web, but it was powering a majority of the _new_ web properties launched that year.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    If you look at the graph of web server market share on Netcraft's site, you can see that Apache ramped up really quickly in the late 90s and stayed ahead of IIS until Nginx started making real inroads. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/ https://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-surve... The vast majority of these web servers were running on Linux. NetBSD was a very niche OS from about the early 2000s on, and far from common before that. Up until about '97 or so most web servers seemed to be running on NT4 or even Windows 95 (which was in itself a fairly terrible idea but they were simpler times).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wk_end 4y ago

"90% or more" ran _NetBSD_? At least say FreeBSD if you want to be even remotely believable. I challenge you to name a single major website that ever ran on NetBSD. Linux was rapidly becoming a successful free platform for web servers by 1998 - that's when the term LAMP was coined [0]. By 2002 "BSD is dying" was already a meme [1] on Slashdot - it was always a joke, exaggerated, but one with a grain of truth. Unlike the claim that NetBSD dominated the market! And while Netcraft never did claim BSD was dying, they did note in 2001 that far from having a near monopoly, "[BSD] has not achieved significant mindshare widely, as Linux has. This limits BSD’s successes largely to a few particular areas." [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) [1] https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying https://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying [2] https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2001/04/01/april_2001_netcraft_web_server_survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2001/04/01/april_2001_net...

Maursault 4y ago
The WWW was developed on a NeXT machine. But NetBSD ran the web for more than a decade, and I mean 90% of 30M webservers globally between 1994 and 2006 ran on NetBSD installations, not FreeBSD, NetBSD. FreeBSD started gaining popularity later. The reason is NetBSD was mature, incredibly stable, free and well-supported. Linux was nowhere in 1998, had zero support, was not stable or mature, and there were no Linux webservers serving the public anywhere in 1998. In 1998, Linux was barely a curiosity, a hobby, and it continued to have no foothold in the WWW until Dell and HP started shipping Linux installations in 2007. Linux fanaticism is compelling, but it can not rewrite history. Linux took over far later than you think. Linux started gaining webserver marketshare only by 2008 as a minority, quickly ramped up in a few years, but only by 2011/12 were most webservers running on Linux.
- wk_end 4y ago
  I didn't ask about NeXT, I asked about NetBSD. Surely if it ran 90% of the web, you can name a single website that was served by it. Like, I honestly can't tell if this is some kind of bizarre troll. People keep asking you for sources for your incredible claims, and you just keep making them without a single reference. Where are you getting this 30M number? This 90% number? Here's another source: Red Hat IPO'd in 1999 on the back of a Linux operating system, per Wikipedia, "achieving—at the time—the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street". Pretty amazing for something that was "barely a curiosity, a hobby". Here's Netcraft in 2003, claiming a mere 2M sites running FreeBSD and describing it as a blip compared to Linux and Windows. > Although nearly all of the public focus is geared around advocacy of Linux and Windows, there is a third Intel based operating system, which generates a tiny fraction of the publicity surrounding these operating systems, and has a much smaller user and developer community. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/07/12/nearly_2_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/07/12/nearly_2_milli... Notably they don't even mention NetBSD. In fact, Netcraft barely ever mentions NetBSD. I get _two_ hits on their entire site for it. Pretty big oversight for something running 90% of the web! Here's a FAQ from 2001 from a commercial BSD company describing FreeBSD as "the most popular open source version of the BSD OS". Weird how, according to you, NetBSD was running 90% of the web up until 2006 but in 2001 FreeBSD was even more popular than it! I mean, I could go on and on. It's frustrating that I can't find any clear cut OS usage stats from that era, but everything points to Linux being a major player by the early 2000s. For example, Java - which was a very big deal at the time - never really supported BSDs, but supported Linux. https://coderanch.com/t/110571/os/Java-NetBsd https://coderanch.com/t/110571/os/Java-NetBsd You had to buy Netcraft's more detailed analysis, but in 2003 based on their previews it's clear they split the world up into "Linux", "Microsoft", "Other", "Solaris", and "Unknown". In the screenshot they show of one DNS owner, Linux was roughly 30% of servers, Microsoft was roughly 50%. Wild how BSD doesn't appear there at all! https://web.archive.org/web/20030425195510/http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/04/14/netcraft_hosting_provider_server_count_available.html https://web.archive.org/web/20030425195510/http://news.netcr... But why am I wasting my time providing these sources? I gave a bunch already, you ignored them and just kept making the same baseless claims about NetBSD's completely undocumented hegemony over the web that collapsed instantaneously. "Rewriting history" indeed!

pjmlp 4y ago

In 2006 I was still mostly using commercial UNIXes in production, with Linux for UNIX at home purposes.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

I'm finding that hard to believe, and I'm a massive NetBSD fanboy. In 2006 I was running about two dozen web servers, and only one of those was NetBSD - the rest were all Debian. The NetBSD one was my personal server, that lived in the water tank cupboard of my flat hooked up to my thumping great 10Mbps cable modem.

Maursault 4y ago
Why is it so hard to believe? NetBSD was a fully mature operating system by the time the WWW was developed. The serious options were Solaris, AIX, HPUX. They weren't free. NetBSD was under active development and runs on literally everything, plus it has pkgsrc, massive amounts of source code available for free that pkgsrc managed. Maybe I am biased because I already know, but it makes a lot of sense NetBSD was so popularly widely deployed for webservers for so long.
- lproven 4y ago
  So prove it. Put up or shut up. Provide supporting evidence, and we will listen. Otherwise: nah.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Because I was running dozens of web servers in 2006 and was a very active part of the ops community, and everybody thought running a website on NetBSD was bonkers. Linux was already well-proven technology by this point, with a variety of free and commercial offerings. We mostly used Debian, although if people really enjoyed handing over money we'd put RHEL on for them.