Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 23:19:13 -0700 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: poor ethernet performance? Message-ID: <199907230619.XAA20688@implode.root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 22 Jul 1999 22:09:51 MDT." <4.2.0.58.19990722220119.04571100@localhost>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>At 08:44 PM 7/22/99 -0700, David Greenman wrote:
>
>> > It would mean that the gap between
>> >Linux and FreeBSD would DOUBLE every year, eventually causing Linux to
>> >leave FreeBSD in the dust.
>>
>> No, the ratio doesn't change when both double each year.
>
>No, but the size of the gap doubles each year. And that's what vendors
>and users alike care about.
There's not much we can do about that; we'd have to grow at a much faster
rate than Linux for a sustained period to change that, and I don't think
that's possible to do unless Linux slows down. In any case, I don't agree that
vendors care which is larger or by how much. The vendors care about the
absolute number of users of a particular OS and if that number exceeds
some threshold ('more than 1 million', etc), and even more importantly, the
demographics of the userbase. FreeBSD users have a significantly different
set of demographics compared to Linux users and some vendors will never
see FreeBSD as being a market for them - no matter how many people use it.
This is one of the reasons why XiG dropped CDE support for FreeBSD...our
users simply weren't interested in it (and for good reason!!! :-)) - they
tend to be more interested in servers and less interested in common desktop
environments. I think it would be cool if we could get more of those kind of
people onboard, but not at the expense of the server type people. XiG's X
product for FreeBSD does well because there seems to be universal interest
with the userbase in running X on at least one machine in their environment.
>> Well, you're right about that, except your conclusion is wrong. The
>>statistics show that Linux growth is actually slowing a little and what
>>used to be a 5:1 ratio of Linux:FreeBSD is actually narrowed to 4:1.
>
>You're basing your figures on downloads (see below), which are not a reliable
>measure of installed base. Many of those downloads are upgrades for existing
>systems.
No, I'm basing my figures on everything I've mentioned (downloads and
CDROM sales) as well as a variety of other metrics. I can't tell you with
any certainty how many people use FreeBSD, but I can tell you that the
ratio is about 4:1 and appears to be shrinking.
and I repeat: I'd really like to know where you get your statistics. As
far as I can tell, your assertions are nothing more than horse exhaust and
have only a foul smell to back them up.
>> You're full of it, Brett. I just got back from a full day of FreeBSD
>>meetings and I can say with certainty that interest with third party vendors
>>is increasing. I'd like to know where you heard that Xig is dropping support
>>for FreeBSD -
>
>Jordan said so explicitly on this list. They've dropped support for FreeBSD
>from all but one of their products: their X server. Want their new CDE? Sorry,
>no can do. That's Linux-only. (See their Web site.)
See above about demographics. It's silly to me for you to say "all but one
of their products: their X server" - when THAT is their product. The other
stuff is just fluff and is apparantly only of interest to a specific and small
set of people. ...and have no dillusions about the X server being on shakey
ground: the very founder of XiG choses to use FreeBSD over the alternatives
for his own desktop machines.
>And, as I've mentioned, Borland is so biased toward Linux that it's tough
>to request FreeBSD support on their survey.
Yeah, and Microsoft is so biased towards Windows that they won't even
consider a port of their Word product to Linux. :-)
I don't see any meat in this argument.
-DG
David Greenman
Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org
Creator of high-performance Internet servers - http://www.terasolutions.com
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199907230619.XAA20688>