As die-hard FreeBSD user and admin I'm interested to know why FreeBSD hasn't been used more often (yeah I know about Netflix and Yahoo but still)?
Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
1–10 of 82 posts
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#2Simple 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.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#3Some 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
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#4It's kind of a virtuous cycle (or vicious cycle, if you prefer BSD): more people use Linux; more guides are written to help others, more software is readily available, and more testing is done by virtue of having a larger user base; so more people use Linux. I don't think there's much to say about qualitative comparisons between Linux and BSD that hasn't already been said to death, but I do think the two are borrowing from each other in healthy ways and approaching parity, at least in an "on paper" sense.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#5Simple 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.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#6[deleted]
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#7In my experience, the BSDs used to be trusted for their reliability and performance. Linux has come a long way in terms of reliability and configuration cost - though performance is harder to tune for. Docker has enabled a lot of trusted deployments. 6-8 years ago I remember the question "Why don't companies use Linux as much in production as FreeBSD?"
Maybe I'm sheltered.
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#8If they should use BSD, wouldn't OpenBSD actually be better? (Default to security)
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#9Some 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/
Re: Why don't companies use FreeBSD as much in production as Linux?
#10Simple 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.
I agree and especially it should be noted that Ubuntu and RedHat had huge marketing budgets compared to pretty much everyone else for the last decade. Nobody really pushes for FreeBSD in business settings because there is no social capital that comes from doing so. All three require a lot of skill to manage but that skill seems lest costly for Red Hat and Ubuntu even though it's not necessarily true. That's the power of marketing.