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> 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,

> 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).

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).