Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#1

Post by httbs » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 10:46 AM UTC

Common wisdom suggests that there are two major web servers: Apache (losing popularity) and Nginx (gaining popularity).

However, a look at the latest trends[1] suggests that we are upon the age of a "triple convergence" in popularity between Apache, Nginx, and the mysterious "other" category.

Which leads to the logical questions: What is the "other" category? How did it become so big? And does it threaten the rule of the Spartan Apachinexology?

[1]: https://www.netcraft.com/blog/september-2023-web-server-survey/

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#2

Post by alrs » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 10:52 AM UTC

I have nothing bad to say about Apache, and it felt kind of weird that people were investing time in replacing it when so many of the scripting languages that sat behind it were hot-garbage, top to bottom.

I assume that "other" is "load balancers."

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#3

Post by ggm » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 10:56 AM UTC

Caddy. Broke the ground with QUIC. Amazingly fast.

I jumped from Apache to nginx but the cgi thing continues to confuse me. I hate the inner protocol to pass cgi calls to a preforked engine, fast though it is.

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#4

Post by seedless-sensat » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 12:01 PM UTC

Other: Node.js, Golang, CDNs, Cloud-managed services, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#5

Post by ksec » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 12:40 PM UTC

OpenResty / Cloudflare, Caddy, IIS, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#6

Post by aynyc » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

Cloud services such as API gateway. I don’t think load balancers show up in the survey.

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#7

Post by elsadek » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 8:20 PM UTC

Nginx was always the preferred one for reverse proxy, and it has a large existence compared to Apache.

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#8

Post by qup » Tue, Oct 03, 2023, 1:06 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #3

Caddy. Broke the ground with QUIC. Amazingly fast. I jumped from Apache to nginx but the cgi thing continues to confuse me. I hate the inner protocol to pass cgi calls to a preforked engine, fast though it is.

Bah, no need for all that understanding. Just find an old config file and change the variables.

Never fails!

Re: Ask HN: Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?

#9

Post by joshxyz » Tue, Oct 03, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

caddy rocks fof automated tls and ease of deployment.

then there is haproxy, envoy, traefik that are configurable as hell.

i love em all.