# A BIG win!



## Beastie7 (Feb 17, 2021)

We did it guys! Now let's move that percentage up.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 17, 2021)

What can I do to help? Quit spoofing my user agent and OS?


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## obsigna (Feb 17, 2021)

Now lets all read aloud and all together the bottom line of the screenshot:

_„*Desktop* Operating System Market Share Worldwide“_​
Now I counter this with my perscounter HomeStats of the _„*Total *Operating System Share Homewide“_

3 macOS desktops
2 Windows desktops
1 FreeBSD desktop
2 FreeBSD server
2 FreeBSD embedded devices
2 FreeBSD VMs
2 FreeBSD cloud server (AWS - not exactly at home, but under my control)

Homewide OS Share:
64,3 % FreeBSD
21,4 % macOS
14,3 % Windows

Not counted 3 mobiles.


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## cynwulf (Feb 17, 2021)

Great result.  Nice round number.  In terms of percentage of general crapness, Linux actually isn't doing too badly...


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## Mjölnir (Feb 17, 2021)

It would be very charming to compare that to the % of

root DNS nameservers running BSD, especially FreeBSD
other DNS nameservers; DNS makes up for a very large fraction of internet traffic
other internet servers, e.g. Netflix makes up for a huge amount of internet traffic
network appliances that are derivatives of FreeBSD
and then sum all up and compare the OS by the % of internet traffic handled.


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## _martin (Feb 17, 2021)

Frankly the most interesting part of that picture is 3% of unknown OS.


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## kpedersen (Feb 17, 2021)

Is it just me but is anyone else fairly impressed that FreeBSD even got on that desktop OS stat counter graphic?

I think it is pretty cool that FreeBSD manages to break away from the "Unknown" group. All at the same time FreeBSD provides just a CLI out of the box! XD

If you split the (very low) 1.91% Linux stats up into individual distros, we might even find that FreeBSD beats a fair few of them. In all of our command line glory


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## BostonBSD (Feb 17, 2021)

The most correct answer is that of fewest assumptions.
The group choice is that of fewest rejections.

[read that several times, you might not want that percentage to go above 0.0%]

{It probably isn't Bill Gates who keeps threatening to get rid of the Windows console every other year. Larger groups keep pulling in every direction.}


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## Beastie7 (Feb 17, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Is it just me but is anyone else fairly impressed that FreeBSD even got on that desktop OS stat counter graphic?



I was too. The recognition alone is needed.  Hopefully the sudden gossip about helloSystem will get us more of these bonus points now and future.


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## a6h (Feb 17, 2021)

I'm all about uniqueness.
−459.67°


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## ctaranotte (Feb 18, 2021)

Here is another one: The world’s second-most popular desktop operating system isn’t macOS anymore

The OS market is changing too fast for me.


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## kpedersen (Feb 18, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> {It probably isn't Bill Gates who keeps threatening to get rid of the Windows console every other year. Larger groups keep pulling in every direction.}


There was a big push at Microsoft in ~2010 to try to get rid of the command prompt from every workflow.
And 10+ years later Microsoft releases Windows Server 2019 with no desktop by default*, relying on just a command line. It just shows, these guys have no clue what they are doing or what is better.

They are just flailing around, reacting to market pressure. From a market who are also incompetent, don't know what they want and are just reacting to vendor pressure.

* They now call it "Desktop Experience" and is seen as a less supported addon for legacy:
https://computingforgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/install-windows-server-2019-04.png


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## zirias@ (Feb 18, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> What can I do to help? Quit spoofing my user agent and OS?


Maybe, maybe not. Just checked on https://www.whatsmyua.info/ with the default User-Agent: sent by Chromium on FreeBSD. One of the three parsers there detects it as Linux.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Feb 18, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> There was a big push at Microsoft in ~2010 to try to get rid of the command prompt from every workflow.


If command prompt means the old cmd.exe then yes, they were right about that.


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## kpedersen (Feb 18, 2021)

failure said:


> If command prompt means the old cmd.exe then yes, they were right about that.


cmd.exe is the shell (for both conhost and powershell). Yes they were naively trying to remove it. Microsoft even pushed their backwards views into education. Even now you have a generation of (then schoolkids) who believe that any sort of command line interface is old-fashioned and that the GUI is "modern".

*Powershell* is their attempt to improve upon a proper terminal
*conhost* is what you think of as the "old"  DOS-style command prompt

Both of these run within the command prompt (cmd.exe). And Microsoft has finally realized that they are crucial for any type of professional or enterprise work.

They are playing catchup via things like this: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
And adding superficial things like tabs. But the fact that they cannot run things like tmux means that those tabs are useless with things like SSH. They are getting considerably far behind.


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## Argentum (Feb 18, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Maybe, maybe not. Just checked on https://www.whatsmyua.info/ with the default User-Agent: sent by Chromium on FreeBSD. One of the three parsers there detects it as Linux.


That is true. I have noticed this before that Chromium on FreeBSD identifies as FreeBSD and Linux at the same time. Do not know where to configure it to send the correct string. Firefox is sending a correct FreeBSD string. Konqueror is similar, sending:


```
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) QtWebEngine/5.15.0 Chrome/80.0.3987.163 Safari/537.36 Konqueror (WebEnginePart)
```

Chromium string:

```
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.150 Safari/537.36
```

Firefox:

```
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:86.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/86.0
```


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## BostonBSD (Feb 18, 2021)

The terminal/console is much faster to operate and easier to script, however, the learning curve is steeper than with the gui. 

There are certainly circumstances where one or the other may be more beneficial, however, I think it's naive to believe that any sort of command prompt will ever become obsolete [vocal commands might be a prospective replacement, but this, I think, would become increasingly irritating].


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## zirias@ (Feb 18, 2021)

This discussion is IMHO heading into a strange direction. The question is not GUI or CLI, you want both. And even for GUI applications, you want to be able to do everything with the keyboard in an efficient way (for "power users"), because it will (almost) always be faster.

Windows had a poor CLI, and I think powershell still stems from the time when the NIH-syndrome was strong at MS. It might be a good CLI, but who would bother to learn that? There are many great shells, and POSIX is a common denominator for many of them…


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 18, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Maybe, maybe not. Just checked on https://www.whatsmyua.info/ with the default User-Agent: sent by Chromium on FreeBSD. One of the three parsers there detects it as Linux.


Here I am really:

jitte@jigoku:/ $ uname -a
FreeBSD jigoku 12.2-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p3 GENERIC amd64

This is what I look like at the link you provided using the "User-Agent Switcher" Firefox extension:

According to useragent v2.2.1:
ua

    rawUa: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3202.9 Safari/537.36
    string:
    family: Chrome
    major: 62
    minor: 0
    patch: 3202
    device: Other 0.0.0

os

    string: Windows 10 0.0.0
    family: Windows 10
    major: 0
    minor: 0
    patch: 0


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## a6h (Feb 18, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> And 10+ years later Microsoft releases Windows Server 2019 with no desktop by default*, relying on just a command line.





Zirias said:


> Windows had a poor CLI, and I think powershell still stems from the time when the NIH-syndrome was strong at MS.



In Windows circle, there's a growing tendency for using WSL2 and PowerShell,
i.e. PowerShell 6 aka PowerShell core, not old ones. That's a good thing - IMO.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 18, 2021)

Well I miss the Windows command prompt that used to be readily available. I carry a Ju-on for someone in the form of 24 keystrokes never invoked.


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## scottro (Feb 19, 2021)

You can still do Windows key and just type cmd in the thing that opens up. (I'm fortunate in that my job doesn't require much use of Windows. I have a VM that I need to access some VMWare machines, so I don't use it very much at all, but you can still do that, unless I'm missing something, or more likely, misunderstanding).


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## BostonBSD (Feb 19, 2021)

Microsoft never got rid of the cmd prompt, they only keep making threats, they've been doing this since WindowsNT came out.

They introduced PowerShell as a sort of replacement for cmd, but they still never got rid of it. Then they started making threats that they would get rid of both cmd and PowerShell, but they didn't do that either.

Now they have PowerShell Core, which is a sort of cross-platform opensource variant of PowerShell. 

I always found PowerShell slightly circumspect, sort of like driving this big tank or 747, a vast array of knobs and switches, each one of utmost importance.  The largest dawback, for me, had been that some of the commands require an entire phrase to be typed into the command line, which I would never remember [something like bash autocompletion would help them considerably].


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## ShelLuser (Feb 19, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> They introduced PowerShell as a sort of replacement for cmd, but they still never got rid of it. Then they started making threats that they would get rid of both cmd and PowerShell, but they didn't do that either.


Got any sources to back up that claim?

See, my sources tell me that PowerShell was never meant to be a cmd replacement, it is in fact a direct result of Microsoft realizing the administrative potential which a command line environment can have. Or to put this more directly: after discovering the popularity of cli based OS'ses like Linux they figured to go along the ride. Building a CLI environment is per definition a lot cheaper than a GUI (definitely where time is concerned) and acknowledging Unix was bound to score them some credit points with the geek crowd.

As for cmd...  many scripts rely on that, task planner (or whatever it's called in English) also relies on this and well, in the end it's a heck of a lot faster than PowerShell so I don't see that part going any time soon.


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## BostonBSD (Feb 19, 2021)

Microsoft Replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell in Latest Windows 10 Build
{Microsoft clarified that they were not replacing cmd.exe in an update.}

Perhaps, I'm not remembering correctly or maybe I misunderstood at the time, but whenever I use Windows the first thing I do is bookmark cmd.exe and powershell.exe.

Over the course of my experience I keep getting news reports, perhaps not from Microsoft itself, but from reputable sources that they are getting rid of these tools.

Now this has never actually occurred, but there are a many instances where rumors circulate about their removal.

Microsoft announced that they were removing support for Windows PowerShell 5.1 in 2016, then they announced they were initiating PowerShell Core, although quite similar, is opensource and platform independent.

However, this only backs up the claim that the group does favor the answer of fewest rejections and not necessarily the answer of fewest assumptions, Microsoft itself, does not appear to be behind the drive to obsolate the command line shell. It appears to be from the masses who use Windows, the majority of whom I suppose do not use command lines.


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## ct85711 (Feb 19, 2021)

I doubt Microsoft will ever remove the terminal prompt (either cmd.exe or powershell), as too much of the core system still is dependent on it to function.  There are still parts of Windows that you have to use the terminal to even run those commands.  I doubt there is too many (if any) system administrators that would want the terminal to be removed.  In the end, some actions are easier to run a simple script/command than going through several windows to do the same thing.  A prime example, I'd even over, is imagine setting up new accounts for 20 new people with the correct permissions that they need.


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## kpedersen (Feb 19, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> However, this only backs up the claim that the group does favor the answer of fewest rejections and not necessarily the answer of fewest assumptions, Microsoft itself, does not appear to be behind the drive to obsolate the command line shell.


Yep, it was very lucky that Microsoft backtracked on removing the command prompt. Otherwise you wouldn't even have Powershell today.

Unfortunately SFU was not quite so lucky. There was an awkward period between the time it was deprecated with nothing to replace it for a few years. Microsoft then realizing that people do in fact use the terminal to do real work quickly got in contact with Canonical to find something to plug their regression.


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## ShelLuser (Feb 20, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> Microsoft Replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell in Latest Windows 10 Build
> {Microsoft clarified that they were not replacing cmd.exe in an update.}


You do realize that article is almost 4 years old?    And well, I still have CMD in my Win-X menu. If they were serious about removing CMD then I cannot help be convinced that it would have been gone after 4 years time.


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## kpedersen (Feb 20, 2021)

My experience with Powershell vs CMD is basically wait 1 second for cmd or 5 seconds for powershell to load.

I always default to cmd because they are both crap. Might as well save 4 seconds of my life.


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## BostonBSD (Feb 20, 2021)

All I was trying to say is that when using windows as a sysadmin, you'll periodically get these trembling reports about how Microsoft is going to eliminate your tools and obsolate everything you know. 

Most of the time these reports never pan out, but this is the life of a Windows sysadmin.

{One thing they did is incorporate posix commands into PowerShell as a way to alleviate these concerns. If they ever really did that Windows Sysadmins should be able to transfer to unix with a lower learning curve.}


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## kpedersen (Feb 21, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> All I was trying to say is that when using windows as a sysadmin, you'll periodically get these trembling reports about how Microsoft is going to eliminate your tools and obsolate everything you know.


Absolutely. If your vendor is only driven by money rather than technical correctness then you have to brace for this kind of impact. Personally I never thought they were going to drop clean maintainable service packs. But then they did.

I have never really tied myself down to their tools so their many planned obsolescences over the years matter very little to me. I think the biggest one I have seen is removal of MS Paint from the main OS .


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## BostonBSD (Feb 21, 2021)

This is perhaps even further off topic, I don't even remember what the original topic was anymore, but I wonder why Apple hasn't made further inroads into the institutional server market [as opposed to the home server market, which they do target].  

They use a Unix OS, which originally was a server OS, but for some reason they never thought that that market would be lucrative for them.


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## scottro (Feb 21, 2021)

They did have a server at  one point, and dropped it, messing up everyone who was using it, of course. Then they put the server in as an option, possibly in Lion, but I don't remember. (I wish they'd stuck to cat names. Maybe we'd be having British short-hair tabby Apple 11.2).  Going by vague memory, and only anecdotal at best. seems that only Mac enthusiasts were buying the server, probably overpriced hardware and most companies preferred cheaper hardware with Windows or Linux (or BSD, but Linux is far more widely used).  So, with their strategy of charging a great deal for hardware that often locked you in, there probably wasn't a great market for it. I feel as if the place I worked last, (7-8 years ago) had one because we had a few Mac enthusiasts there, but I only vaguely remember an OSX server, and I think it was being taken out of service when I got there.

But back then, Apple were kind of the good guys. They used to donate meeting space at Apple stores for local BSD user groups. I'm sorry, my memory isn't great, I don't know how long that lasted, probably till Jobs heard about it. 


The original topic, by the way, was FreeBSD being listed as 0% use, but at least getting listed.  I don't know about the rest of the world, but often, it's quite difficult to find jobs using FreeBSD. Here in the Northeast US, it seems as if it's usually RH or RH clone Linux.


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## tingo (Feb 21, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> This is perhaps even further off topic, I don't even remember what the original topic was anymore, but I wonder why Apple hasn't made further inroads into the institutional server market [as opposed to the home server market, which they do target].
> 
> They use a Unix OS, which originally was a server OS, but for some reason they never thought that that market would be lucrative for them.


According to a friend of mine, the "server" part of the Apple ecosystem lacks the tools to set up common functionality that a server admin would want. Example: if you wanted to set up a file server, you would want to first set up a common directory with all users. This is possible, but Apple doesn't provide any easy tools to do it, and certainly not easily operated tools like Apple users would be accustomed to.


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## kpedersen (Feb 21, 2021)

tingo said:


> According to a friend of mine, the "server" part of the Apple ecosystem lacks the tools to set up common functionality that a server admin would want.


From what I have seen, macOS is basically butchered to make the OS more "user-friendly". For example it is almost impossible to get a chroot going. The command exists but there is no real way to populate a folder with a base system.

The (now obsolete) Xserve hardware is quite cool. I have an Xeon-flavoured 1u propped up against my work monitor and still use it as a workstation. Not too loud or screechy unlike many 1u's.






Suffice to say, I don't run Mac OS X on it


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## grahamperrin@ (Mar 4, 2021)

_martin said:


> Frankly the most interesting part of that picture is 3% of unknown OS.


That's me, alone, manually rebooting a single ambiguous computer five hundred times daily, with the ultimate aim of pushing Google Chrome OS from second most popular, back down to third. Thank _you_, for your interest.



scottro said:


> The original topic, by the way, was FreeBSD being listed as 0% use, but at least getting listed.


When I first saw the graphic posted to Reddit, I thought that someone was having a laugh. It took me a short while to understand that there was previously no listing for FreeBSD. 









						Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
					

This graph shows the market share of desktop operating systems worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.




					gs.statcounter.com
				






vigole said:


> In Windows circle, there's a growing tendency for using WSL2 and PowerShell,
> i.e. PowerShell 6 aka PowerShell core, not old ones. That's a good thing - IMO.


Where might I find a concise distinction? As close to ELI5 as possible. 

I necessarily make occasional use of PowerShell and I guess that it's not _core_ because I see advertisements for core at the command line. 

Advertisements at the command line.



BostonBSD said:


> Microsoft never got rid of the cmd prompt, they only keep making threats, they've been doing this since WindowsNT came out.
> 
> They introduced PowerShell as a sort of replacement for cmd, but they still never got rid of it. Then they started making threats that they would get rid of both cmd and PowerShell, but they didn't do that either.
> 
> ...


I do remember thinking _Oh, FFS_ when I discovered that some things that are intended for cmd are not usable in PowerShell. Or is my memory mistaken?



kpedersen said:


> SFU was not quite so lucky.


Services for UNIX?



kpedersen said:


> The (now obsolete) Xserve hardware is quite cool.


Very. What _am_ I to do with the XServe RAID array that was removed from my previous place of work?


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## a6h (Mar 4, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> I necessarily make occasional use of PowerShell and I guess that it's not _core_ because I see advertisements for core at the command line.


It's FreeBSD Forums, but PowerShell is on wiki.freebsd.org/WantedPorts  -- _Just for future reference_:

`powershell.exe` 5.1
* Windows only (WMF)
* based on .Net / ISE
* Receives bugfix update.
* It's a component of the Windows (..\System32), thus they (Microsoft) never throw it away! -- with/without update.

`pwsh(.exe)` 7.1.2
* MIT licence
* Cross-platform (deb, pkg, msi)
* based on .Net core
* Receives all updates (bugfix, feature)

If you are not sure about edition/version:
Desktop or Core: `$PSVersionTable.PSEdition`
Version: `$PSVersionTable`


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## CuatroTorres (Mar 4, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Absolutely. If your vendor is only driven by money rather than technical correctness then you have to brace for this kind of impact. Personally I never thought they were going to drop clean maintainable service packs. But then they did.
> 
> I have never really tied myself down to their tools so their many planned obsolescences over the years matter very little to me. I think the biggest one I have seen is removal of MS Paint from the main OS .


Which was just a pulling move in favor of Paint 3D. Pushing a new software or service is normalized for business. Users complained and brought it back, which is even more surprising.
If it's the biggest event you've seen then I don't care, there are alternatives, they have people drawing in Excel now.


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