# How much FreeBSD is there in your world?



## saxon3049 (Sep 16, 2011)

How much FreeBSD is there in your world?

I am wondering just out of interest what the usage statistics for FreeBSD and the other BSD's and derivatives is i.e. home vs work the % of use compared to other systems etc. So could you just take a few moments to fill in the following -

I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both
I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both
I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows) -
Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home.  
What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative.

Thanks for reading and taking part.


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## Sylhouette (Sep 16, 2011)

We have a small number of custumors that use FreeBSD. 

But the most custumors run Microsoft Windows 2000 - 2008 SBS servers.

One of our bigger custumors run FreeBSD for the proxy at all there offices and use FreeBSD for there mail filtering and main mail server.

Another custumor uses FreeBSD also as mailfilter, proxy and they have some branch offices that use FreeBSD as the local samba server, which uses there main windows 2008 server for authentication and so on.

All of our custumors use monowall or pfsense for there firewall needs.

We are now looking to buid a ZFS SAN/NAS solution, but performance of ZFS and the unkown makes us a little sceptic if FreeBSD is the right choice for this.

Why we choose FreeBSD over Linux, is that in the past we used Linux, but in every distribution we used there was always something missing.
Then i came across FreeBSD and it did always what we wanted.
So we made the discission to stick with FreeBSD and forget about linux, and it served us well till now.

At home i use FreeBSD as a samba server.

Well that is it.

regards,
Johan Hendriks


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## vermaden (Sep 16, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> [*]I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both


In short, both.

In long, at home for NAS and laptop, at work for my workstation and several important servers, but its in the minority, most servers are other OSes.



> [*]I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both


I definitely track all interesting changes and features of other BSDs, I did tried other BSDs, but after chacking them I did not see any reason to use them instead of FreeBSD, well, maybe OpenBSD for more up-to-date PF, NetBSD for Xen dom0 or some exotic hardware and DragonflyBSD for HAMMER and its lightweight deduplication feature.



> [*]I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows)


I have used Mac OS X for about a year at work for my main workstation and I went back to FreeBSD, feels much better. I am only person at my house that uses FreeBSD for the laptop/workstation, others are using Windows. At work, well, its Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and Linux.



> [*]Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home.


At home, exacly 2, at work, less then 10.


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## fonz (Sep 16, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both


Both.



			
				saxon3049 said:
			
		

> I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both


Home. I have some exotic hardware that FreeBSD doesn't run on, like old (and I do mean old) SGI/HP/Sun machines. And the original OS usually blows. Older HP-UX versions are a  pain to admin and old IRIX versions have more holes in them than Swiss cheese. NetBSD is much nicer to live with.



			
				saxon3049 said:
			
		

> I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows) -


At work I'm occasionally forced to use Linux and/or Windows.
At home, all my own computers run some form of UNIX, including but not exclusively FreeBSD. Others are nowadays free to use whatever they want, I dropped my _"Nobody Shall Bring Microsoft Into *MY* House"_ policy years ago because hardly anyone dared to visit me anymore.



			
				saxon3049 said:
			
		

> Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home.


Home: varies, but less than 10 anyway. On average I'd say 2 or 3.
Work: even though I'm a computer scientist, I think I'm probably one of very few people at my university to use (Free)BSD. Staff know it exists but can't be bothered to check it out, students often haven't even heard of it. Nowadays, most students are Windows Weenies anyway. If I have to hazard a guess, let's say there are 5 (Free)BSD installs on the entire campus.



			
				saxon3049 said:
			
		

> What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative.


Servers (mail, Web, DNS, CVS, SSH, (anon)FTP, NTP, NIS, etc.) as well as desktop use. I had it on my old laptop and I still run it on my current netbook.

Fonz

P.S. I see you live in Liverpool. Are you red or blue?


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## quintessence (Sep 17, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> How much FreeBSD is there in your world?
> 
> I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both
> I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both
> ...




work
home - 2 x OpenBSD
2 x licensed Windows and some Linux based firmware on the wireless - Tomato
work > 40 , home - 0 (I actually have some hard drives with FreeBSD but they are physically placed "out" of PC :e)
as servers


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## ericbsd (Sep 17, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> How much FreeBSD is there in your world?
> 
> I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both
> I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both
> ...



I Use FreeBSD at home at work i do not have choice to use windows:\.
I have try NetBSD but still on FreeBSD
On one of my laptop i use Ubuntu because FreeBSD don't boot.  
4 using FreeBSD and GhostBSD.  
I use FreeBSD to develop GhostBSD, recherche, programming  gaming, music and sever ect....


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## tingo (Sep 17, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> How much FreeBSD is there in your world?
> 
> I am wondering just out of interest what the usage statistics for FreeBSD and the other BSD's and derivatives is i.e. home vs work the % of use compared to other systems etc. So could you just take a few moments to fill in the following




I Use FreeBSD at - Home. No choice at work - Windows
I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home: no, but I test other os'es all the time.
I use other OS'es at Home and it's OSX, Linux
Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home: 10 (yes, I have far too many computers running)
What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative:  everything (file server, Squeezebox server, MythTV backend, firewall / gateway, main workstation. The only machines that permanently runs something else are my MythTV frontend (OSX) and my laptop (Linux, Ubuntu)
The only reason my laptop run Ubuntu is that I haven't made it work with FreeBSD.


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## xibo (Sep 17, 2011)

1. I use FreeBSD at home.
2. I sometimes play around with OpenBSD in a VM at home, and used to work with OpenBSD at my former workspace.
3. I also used linux/gnu(gentoo,SuSE) for the sake of video-drivers on my laptop, but have moved back to Windows OS because linux was no less a pain.
4. I use 8-STABLE on 2 computers at home, plus my CURRENT-laptop. At work I'm forced to use linux/gnu (Ubuntu) via nx-client from __very__ poorly configured Windows XP installations.
5. I install FreeBSD for programming (1), and for ZFS and good NFS support (2), and since it's already installed I use it for any other desktop purpose.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 17, 2011)

1) Both
2) No.
3) We have one old Windows box for only testing IE browsers and one for QuickBooks.
4) 10
5) Design and developer web sites and applications.


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## anomie (Sep 17, 2011)

At work I manage three FreeBSD servers: 

 a (hardened) bastion host
 an HTTP proxy server + Nagios host
 a development environment (mostly Perl) that is used to process financial data

If FreeBSD's SAN and multipathing support were solid, I would be using it in a couple more areas. Perhaps I will give it all another try with the release of FreeBSD 9. 

Apart from that, my department is a large Linux shop (mostly RHEL5; some RHEL4; some Debian 6). 

At home I have several OSX workstations, an Ubuntu laptop, and - for the first time since 2004 - a Windows laptop. (Windows 7 is needed just so I can access some DRAC GUIs, which use Active X. And a Hitachi SAN management tool that only plays nice on Windows. Ugh.)


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## da1 (Sep 17, 2011)

@work -> 90+ servers
@2nd work -> 4 (2 more incoming)
@home - 1x Lenovo T420s (used for work mainly and some personal stuff on the side)


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## hitest (Sep 17, 2011)

I currently run one FreeBSD work station and a FreeBSD derivative on my router/firewall.


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## alie (Sep 18, 2011)

1. I use FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE at home / work
2. I use FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE on my personal laptop (Lenovo v100)
3. I use pfSense for my personal NAS
4. I use ArchLinux for my wife


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## kpa (Sep 19, 2011)

1) I use FreeBSD at - Home
2) I use a other version of BSD - None
3) I use another OS at Home - Windows & OS X
4) Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home - 2.
5) What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative - Firewall/router and file server.


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## Dies_Irae (Sep 19, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both


I use FreeBSD on my desktop at home and at work in a virtual machine



> I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both


OpenBSD on my home firewall/fileserver and at work in a virtual machine



> I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows)


Windows at home (until someone at Electronic Arts will be kind enough to create a BSD version of Battlefield Bad Company 2) and at work (it's not my choice, I am forced).



> Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home


2 physical machines and 2 virtual



> What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative


FreeBSD @home: typical desktop
FreeBSD @work: unfortunately I work in a Windows-only environment so this is a small virtual machine that I use to help my poor Windows (the host) do jobs that are beyond his capacity :e . Most of these consists in data extraction/analysis of txt files with an alien structure, or however files with formats unknown to humankind, so sed, awk, perl & Co. are my friends!
OpenBSD @home: firewall and fileserver - work in progress
OpenBSD @work: just a small virtual machine that I use for testing configurations that I subsequently port to my OpenBSD @home


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## vermaden (Sep 19, 2011)

Dies_Irae said:
			
		

> FreeBSD @work: unfortunately I work in a Windows-only environment so this is a small virtual machine that I use to help my poor Windows (the host) do jobs that are beyond his capacity :e . Most of these consists in data extraction/analysis of txt files with an alien structure, or however files with formats unknown to humankind, so sed, awk, perl & Co. are my friends!



Check CYGWIN, that way You can use all *nix stuff on Windows.


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## torcod (Sep 19, 2011)

> I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both


At home I have FreeBSD running on my desktop and on the router.

At work I have FreeBSD acting as a fileserver for some XP and OS X 10.6 clients.

Also at work the firewall is running m0n0wall on a soekris box.


> I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both


I used to run OpenBSD back in the day but otherwise I'm FreeBSD only now.


> I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows) -


At work I mostly use Windows and OS X for day to day tasks.

At home usage is pretty split between FreeBSD and OS X.


> Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home.
> What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative.


2 Computers at home
2 at work

As for some more detailed info.
The machine at work has two file shares. One is used as general file dump for the Windows users (mostly sales) the other is used to store art for the graphic design department.

As for my home setup, my FreeBSD box acts as my main desktop but also does some light file serving tasks. (NFS sharing of a drive with lots of media files as well as netatalk for backing up my laptop)


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## Dies_Irae (Sep 20, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> Check CYGWIN, that way You can use all *nix stuff on Windows.



This is a good idea, but this way I will not learn to use FreeBSD!
However, thank you very much for the suggestion!


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## ah7013 (Sep 20, 2011)

1) I use FreeBSD at home.
2) No, just FreeBSD.
3) I also use Linux (Fedora) and Windows XP/7 at home.
4) At home I have 4 computers running FreeBSD.
5) Web browsing, listening to music, playing games, learning how FreeBSD works.


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## pkubaj (Sep 20, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> How much FreeBSD is there in your world?
> 
> I am wondering just out of interest what the usage statistics for FreeBSD and the other BSD's and derivatives is i.e. home vs work the % of use compared to other systems etc. So could you just take a few moments to fill in the following -
> 
> ...


1. Only at home (2 desktops and a notebook, going to buy a server, which will also run on FreeBSD) - I'm a student so I don't work.
2. I run Mac OS X at my desktop as my 2nd OS.
3. I use Maemo (a Debian-based Linux distro) on my phone. I also run OSX Lion on my desktop, and Windows on the notebook. At the uni we use mainly Debian, but there's also Windows.
4. 3 at home (4 when I finally buy a server) + ~100 at the uni (at my Faculty).


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## sossego (Sep 20, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> How much FreeBSD is there in your world?
> 
> I am wondering just out of interest what the usage statistics for FreeBSD and the other BSD's and derivatives is i.e. home vs work the % of use compared to other systems etc. So could you just take a few moments to fill in the following -
> 
> ...



FreeBSD is installed on four machines at home.
NetBSD is on a laptop which is used at school.
I also use Debian(Linux) on the laptop- separate drives.
The machines are for testing software and killing boredom.


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## saxon3049 (Sep 24, 2011)

Thanks for the replies guy's keep them coming! 

Oh Fonz - Neither I am a rare scouser I don't support any football team, odd but there you go.


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## aragon (Sep 24, 2011)

I use FreeBSD everywhere except on small (cheap) virtual machines.  Debian (APT) binary package management is just better on systems with few hardware resources IMHO.

Most of my paid work is either Linux or Windows oriented.

Personally I have 2 workstations, 4 servers, and a router that all run FreeBSD.


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## hitest (Sep 26, 2011)

Added another FreeBSD unit today.  I blew out my one XP pro partition on one of my main boxes and put a FreeBSD slice on it; dual booting slackware-current /FreeBSD. 

Edit, added later.  My apologies DutchDaemon.


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## Daisuke_Aramaki (Sep 27, 2011)

Ultra SPARC Box (Bebop) - NetBSD 5.1
Sun Blade (SUNSPOT) - Solaris (Untouched)
Desktop 1 (Muon) - FreeBSD Current/Sorcerer OS Dual Boot
Desktop 2 (Baryon) - DragonFly BSD 2.10.1
EEE Top (Hadron) - OpenBSD beta (always)
Laptop 1 (ENTERPRISE) - FreeBSD 8.2
Laptop 2 (Solaris) - ChromaX (Home baked version of minimal Opensolaris with NetBSD's pkgsrc for package management. Hobby project)
EEE PC 1000H (Section9) - OpenBSD 4.8 (Will upgrade to 5.0 this November)

Apart from the above, I used to have 23 more old machines that I resurrected and rebuilt. They all run Lunar Linux with XFCE. I donated them to an Old Age Home in my neighborhood last December.


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## shakky4711 (Sep 29, 2011)

> 1. I Use FreeBSD at - Home / Work / Both
> 2. I use a other version of BSD (Open, Net etc) at - Home / Work / Both
> 3. I use another OS at Home / Work / Both and it's (OSX, Linux, Windows) -
> 4. Please give a general estimate on number of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative at your Work and Home.
> 5. What is the main use of computers running FreeBSD or a derivative.



1) only at home, work is for 90% Windows dominated, the rest from 10% are Linux servers

2) FreeNAS and PC-BSD on two desktops and one laptop

3) Most of my desktops at home are running Debian Linux with Gnome, 2 Systems for Audio/Video are still runnning Windows2000

4) At home 3xPC-BSD, 2xFreeBSD and 3xFreeNAS, some FreeNAS filers at friendships, no FreeBSD at work :-(
BTW: I was really surprised, not one of our IT admins heard about FreeBSD before or had any contact with it during his worklife...

5) File storage


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## fonz (Sep 30, 2011)

saxon3049 said:
			
		

> I don't support any football team, odd but there you go.


Odd indeed, but you're probably better off that way 

Fonz (who favours the mighty (uhm... used to be, anyway) reds of Anfield Road, but nevermind that )


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## grigorovl (Oct 7, 2011)

FreeNAS for home file sharing
PC-BSD desktop (me)
FreeBSD laptop (me)

Ubuntu desktop (father)
Ubuntu laptop (wife)

This was as close as I could get with them being comfortable with non ms products. Who knows, maybe in an year or two I will switch them to PC-BSD as it gets even better and better


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## usdmatt (Oct 7, 2011)

My home & work desktops both run Windows 7. I think I might be the only person on this forum that actually thinks it's a half decent, productive OS for desktop use. Can't stand anything that comes under the 'Microsoft Server Technologies' banner though - slow, resource hungry, overly complicated stuff that tends to break randomly.

My home NAS is a neat little FreeBSD/ZFS box running Samba/mediatomb/etc - so 1 at home.

At work we probably have about 30-50 FreeBSD servers (not going to count them). Generally they are mail, web, dns, dhcp, radius, the usual ISP stuff. Most are physical but we have about 10 on top of VMWare ESXi.


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## hedgehog (Oct 7, 2011)

1. Home and work: FreeBSD amd64 8.2-Release + KDE
2. Servers: FreeBSD (i386/amd64), win, gentoo
3. Girlfriend's PC: WinXP :\


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## saxon3049 (Oct 12, 2011)

Thanks guy's, please keep the answers coming.

Oh and Fonz if you ever decide to take the 29.99 flight over to Liverpool to watch a game let me know, I prity much know every drinking establishment in this fair city .


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