Marc G. Fournier has launched a new project with the intention to show hardware vendors that there in fact are a lot of BSD users out there. “We are trying to demonstrate to hardware and software vendors out there that BSD should be viewed as a serious operating system, not just as a hobbyist system, for support (i.e. hardware drivers) purposes.”
FreeBSD users should consider this, even though we tend to not care about numbers. Anything that will get us better hardware support is welcome. Also, perhaps down the road these numbers will help convince potential (or current) employers that you weren’t just wasting your time ;-).
I am definitely going to set this up on the 100+ machines I am responsible for.
Nice project but with some limitations- it can’t detect if current system is some FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD or other OS derivative like: PC-BSD, FreeSBIE, DesktopBSD, RoFreeSBIE, etc.
More organized hardware side would be nice too, with custom queries and report generator- maybe even screen resolution and default desktop environment statistics.
Overall good idea.
I think the first focus should be to just get the *BSD numbers, later on they could sort into versions and hardware statistics.
Just letting manufactors know there is a huge number of installations should be enough to get some to start thinking of support. Even if they only write a driver for one version, it should make it easier to port it to another. (as long as it’s not a binary-only driver though)
Nice project but with some limitations- it can’t detect if current system is some FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD or other OS derivative like: PC-BSD, FreeSBIE, DesktopBSD, RoFreeSBIE, etc.
Given the goals of this project, it doesn’t matter wether someone uses FreeBSD or PCBSD; they use the same drivers after all. Better to show a unified listing to vendors rather than a fractured list of systems people want support for.
All BSD fans should install this program. I have done this already on FreeBSD.
cd /usr/ports/sysutils/bsdstats
make install clean
then follow the instructions.
once it is installed,
ee /etc/periodic.conf
and add these two lines:
monthly_statistics_enable=”YES”
monthly_statistics_report_devices=”YES”
————————————————–
I installed it on all of my servers. Great to see something like this.
If you update your ports (cvsup or portsnap) first, then the latest version of bsdstats automatically sets up the configuration.
sure, i will particiapte.
This is a great idea.
It could be cool to view usage statistics for Linux also.
This reminds me of The Linux Counter: http://counter.li.org/
Once upon a time, most of new Linux users registered there, if only for fun. Nobody seems to care these days.
I update my page semiregularly.
The linux counter should do something similar. Actually the linux counter should be initiated by the distros, be in the form of a similar script. Linux like BSD needs actual usage numbers for lobbying purposes.
I thought netcraft could already be used to confirm that BSD is dying.
Why is another project needed?
I want to, but the script doesn’t provide for a proxy option. All my machines use the proxy to get out there on the big, bad internet.
I’d either have to redirect or allow the connection to this site through the firewall. (not happy to do that)
I always love to see the ever expanding interest in the *BSD’s, be it for OpenBSd, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, FreeBSD and other BSD friends.
I love everything about the *BSD’s, from how clean the partitioning schemes look (slices are nicer than mulitple partitions IMHO), to the consistancy of the handbooks, manuals and overall system experience. I love it.
All the best, to all the *BSD’s.
Their script doesn’t support OpenBSD. By including the metrics for it on their page with 0 participants, it looks like no one is using it. They should either take it off, or make note of that on the page.
Uh, where do you get the script from? Not everyone is using the freebsd ports tree, especially not on non-freebsd systems.
The page isn’t that cluttered. Look at the last paragraph of their “Mission”:
To participate, download the following script, known to work with FreeBSD and NetBSD: http://www.bsdstats.org/downloads/300.statistics
Nice there’s a script for non-freebsd users, but how am I supposed to use it? (on NetBSD) Periodicly once a month in cron? What does it send exactly? Can I run it as non-root? Can I re-run the script if I forgot to put monthly_statistics_report_devices=”YES” in /etc/rc.conf? Of course I could “analyse” the script itself, however some information should be nice…
Read the man page for periodic all your questions are answered in there. This has nothing to do with cron.