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Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

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Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#61

Post by ksec »

nirvdrum wrote: post #11

I'm not sure you're going to find one unifying answer, so I'll just contribute my own experience. - FreeBSD lost the desktop battle to Linux. All joking aside about Linux on the desktop, if you want a *nix environment (and not Mac), Linux distributions are just a lot easier to set up and have traditionally enjoyed better packaging of proprietary software (graphics card drivers, RAID card drivers, applications, etc.).…

I think, Google, EC2 and the 2nd Class Java Support all play its part. You have no Java and No Enterprise, and most of the money are made from Enterprise, less money in the ecosystem, and less people using it. Going in a full Circle.

Heck even Apple dont use FreeBSD with their Servers

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#62

Post by isxek »

kennell wrote: post #5
jmspring wrote: post #2

Simple answer - knowledge share. Many more people know and are familiar with Linux than FreeBSD. Throw in companies like Red Hat, etc. and that makes it more compelling for those wanting some sort of support backing. Personally, I've been running FreeBSD (including some commercial installs -- years ago) for about 16-17 years.

Pretty much this this. Linux (especially Debian-based distros), is usually the first UNIX flavour that people coming from Windows get in touch with. While FreeBSD has excellent documentation, Ubuntu and others simply have the larger newbie-friendly community.

This sums up my experience. I still have an ISO of FreeBSD 10.1 sitting somewhere on my system just waiting for me to copy over to a USB drive once I work out how to set it up on a dual-boot system along with Windows.

So far, all the guides I've seen for dual-booting have been for Linux, and they've all been straightforward.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#63

Post by ksec »

I read / "think" Yahoo is not using FreeBSD any more. The move to Linux started before Marissa era. And I think by now they should be 99% Linux.

Netflix I "think / read" is only using FreeBSD with their Storage Appliance. So that is relatively small parts in number of Servers. Most of their operation, those Chaos Monkey killed machines are all EC2 and Linux.

Whatsapp is Erlang and FreeBSD, a real rare bleed. But i read Facebook is hiring Engineers to make Linux Network Stack better then FreeBSD. Bold claim on the Job Description, then there were rumours Whatsapp moving to integrate with Facebook, i.e moving off FreeBSD to Linux. I doubt thats an coincidence.

Despite the many / some similarities between FreeBSD and OSX, even Apple aren't using any FreeBSD on their Servers. At least there hasn't been any evidence in hiring.

So really, which large, Internet Company is actually using FreeBSD?

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#64

Post by jfoutz »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jfoutz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is easier to copy a solution to a linux problem from stack overflow than to read the FreeBSD handbook, understand the problem and fix it. I'm (a little) ashamed to admit tech support via trolling. Linux sucks because you can't even [whatever]. It is nice to get a quick response of "it's just [whatever], noob". Although, that was a last resort. I've met a couple of people that reread man pages every year, i've ne…

> It is nice to get a quick response Indeed, it is. But one won't learn anything of value. One just learns the solution to a very specific problem. If one chooses to learn the basics, more often than not one will decide that it is quicker to dive into the problem and fix it than to "troll" tech support.

Well, this specific case is trolling zealots, not tech support.

I mostly agree with you, but there are some unique facts that, back in the day, you just sort of had to know. something like

    echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
You know exactly what you need to do, but haven't memorized the name of the bit to twiddle to get the behavior you want. Now there are, of course, tools to configure these sorts of things. More importantly, google and stackoverflow help immensely with this kind of thing.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#65

Post by emersonrsantos »

unsignedqword wrote: post #9
emersonrsantos wrote: post #3

Some reasons I could think: - It's easier and cheaper to find Linux sysadmins than BSD ones - There's more commercial software supported on Linux - There's more companies offering support for Linux - Linux is more portable than BSD - Linux is one of the standard server OS offered by providers, BSD isn't

I'm confused by what you mean by "more portable." Do you mean that it runs on more CPU architectures and platforms? Or do you mean more driver support, etc.? BSD can run a rather diverse set of platforms: http://www.netbsd.org/ports/

Quantitatively speaking, Linux has a large share on diverse platforms, and is on the top usage as client (eg. Android), server, and embedded devices that run a typical computer OS.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#66

Post by mwpmaybe »

geggam wrote: post #47

Lowest common denominator. Those people who are familiar with a Unix variant are more familiar with Linux. Linux is different enough from *BSD that what people do learn about Linux doesn't translate. Linux entry level is actually easier than Windows these days. In fact when I look for candidates if they only have Ubuntu / Docker on their resume its trash. What used to be considered entry level skill sets are now call…

> if they only have Ubuntu / Docker on their resume its trash

I hope there's some wiggle room in there for folks who may know more but cater their resumes to what they want to do and/or the buzzwords recruiters are filtering by.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#67

Post by microtonal »

rdtsc wrote: post #40
wtbob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer. That hurts to read. Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) has been around for decades (literally: it's 22 years old), and has been providing an extremely stable server, for free, with just a few apt-get commands. > What used to be hours each we…

> That hurts to read. Why? Ubuntu is based on Debian and I guessing it shares and contributes to same package ecosystem. > Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) has been around for decades Found Debian, after being around for decades, never quite won the desktop market. Debian got there perhaps 80% ofthe way, but the final 20% was just hard to achieve, and I think Ubuntu put a great effort into that 20%, polishing it u…

So, back to Debian, once I want to deploy something and I've played with it on my Ubuntu dev machine, which OS would I evaluate first? Ubuntu Server, of course.

Maybe, but Ubuntu Server has serious downsides when it comes to security updates. Canonical only releases security updates for main/restricted, while Debian releases security updates for the whole distribution. So, if you are using packages from universe/multiverse (which I guess a lot of people do), security updates are not guaranteed. Or as Canonical puts it:

Canonical does not provide a guarantee of regular security updates for software in the universe component, but will provide these where they are made available by the community.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#68

Post by personsunknown »

msane wrote: post #39
wtbob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer. That hurts to read. Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) has been around for decades (literally: it's 22 years old), and has been providing an extremely stable server, for free, with just a few apt-get commands. > What used to be hours each we…

Nobody is knocking Debian. Ubuntu picked Debian, for apt-get and stability, after all. But apt-get has undergone many improvements because of the swell in Ubuntu users. And that user-base has brought more documentation and energy to linux than any other distro.

Ubuntu contributes very little to Debian.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#69

Post by personsunknown »

I can tell you my experience as to why Linux won out in production. Many years ago when I was doing enterprise systems administration, we were using both Linux and BSD equally in the beginning. But what eventually gave Linux the edge was hardware support and package management. Linux had solid SMP support first, which meant we could replace expensive UNIX servers like Suns and AlphaServers with much cheaper Intel based multi-processor servers. PLus Linux had more drivers for hardware like RAID and network cards. We didn't have to hunt down specific, often older, hardware like we did for our BSD servers. Also IBM ported Linux to it's z series servers so Linux had a (what we used to term) "big iron" server solution first and could replace proprietary solutions like the high end HP9000's. Package management was a huge plus. It greatly reduced administrative time. Major software upgrades, like when we had to replace libc6 on all our *NIX servers because of a major security bug, would take hours on the BSD servers but minutes on our Debian servers.

Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?

#70

Post by wtbob »

josephg wrote: post #33
wtbob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, what changed was Ubuntu. Being able to have a fairly robust server on the cheap and maintain it fairly well with just a few apt-get commands was a huge game changer. That hurts to read. Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) has been around for decades (literally: it's 22 years old), and has been providing an extremely stable server, for free, with just a few apt-get commands. > What used to be hours each we…

> Or you could switch to Debian and get the same ease-of-use with better security. Honest question: In what ways is the security story on debian better than the security on ubuntu?

> In what ways is the security story on debian better than the security on ubuntu?

See danieldk's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12201051&goto=threads%...

I'd add that Ubuntu encourages the use of PPAs, which are a security nightmare.

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