6 ms·

"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 Net

by 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!
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Your citations don't say anything about the web. I also don't know why you are wasting your time. I am not really interested in trying to convince you since you are astoundingly abusive. FreeBSD was certainly loved, by researchers and universities, but I don't think we can trust a source that appears to be marketing, "we're No. 1!" I know why NetBSD ran the web for so long, because it was based on BSD4.3, ran on everything, was well-supported by a community in active development, included pkgsrc and all the ports that came with it, and it is free, unlike the alternatives Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, which also more often than not took advantage of pkgsrc. Linux was just not a viable option for running a public webserver between 1993-200x, but as to why NetBSD and not FreeBSD, I can't answer, but I know for a fact that most webservers globally ran NetBSD from the development of WWW and for over a decade, and the rest, in minority, ran Windows Server IIS. Why this is not widely documented is no mystery; it just isn't that interesting. Believe it or not, I honestly don't care. Believe what you wish.

by wk_end 4y ago

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!
- Maursault 4y ago
  Your citations don't say anything about the web. I also don't know why you are wasting your time. I am not really interested in trying to convince you since you are astoundingly abusive. FreeBSD was certainly loved, by researchers and universities, but I don't think we can trust a source that appears to be marketing, "we're No. 1!" I know why NetBSD ran the web for so long, because it was based on BSD4.3, ran on everything, was well-supported by a community in active development, included pkgsrc and all the ports that came with it, and it is free, unlike the alternatives Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, which also more often than not took advantage of pkgsrc. Linux was just not a viable option for running a public webserver between 1993-200x, but as to why NetBSD and not FreeBSD, I can't answer, but I know for a fact that most webservers globally ran NetBSD from the development of WWW and for over a decade, and the rest, in minority, ran Windows Server IIS. Why this is not widely documented is no mystery; it just isn't that interesting. Believe it or not, I honestly don't care. Believe what you wish.