The Apache Software Foundation has arguably been the leading force for open-source software over the last 10 years and promises to continue being a force in the new decade. During a visit to the organization’s corporate headquarters in Forest Hill, Md., Jim Jagielski, chairman of the ASF board of directors, told eWEEK that ASF has indeed had a “huge impact” on the industry.
Nginx makes the Apache Web Server irrelevant at this point.
yes, another webserver makes all others irrelevant.
Well most people outside of the Java world probably do not know how important the ASF is for Java.
And no this has nothing to do with the famous web server, and yes the industry impact is huge.
Nginx?
Never heard of it.
Exactly, which is why apache is suddenly irrelevant because of it.
It’s a small open-source web server, a lot like lighttpd, which seems to have a somewhat rabid fan base.
Frankly, it’s only really useful in two situations – your server is severely memory restricted (like a very small VPS), or you don’t know how to configure Apache properly (since nginx only really has one mode of operation, and very few options you could get wrong).
Apache has more features, is much more flexible, is more widely known and supported. If you configure it in the same way that nginx is configured, it’s only slightly slower, and uses only slightly more memory.
Edit: It’s also useful when you don’t actually need a web server. If you already use something like Django or Rails / Rack, which provide their own web server anyway, you don’t need a full web server like Apache. Instead, you need a reverse proxy. This seems to be the most common way to deploy nginx, in which case it’s replacing Squid, not Apache. Unlike Squid, it doesn’t natively do caching.
Edited 2010-01-07 06:51 UTC
You guys might be missing his point. I’m not sure he wanted to say this (he might be just trolling, but that’s ok
), but here’s my take:
You want a web server just for static content. And you want it to be fast at that. Nginx is pretty fast.
For the rest, you’re using app servers anyway, for JSP, Ruby, Python, whatever. And most of the time those are built-in anyway.
So yes, from a tech point of view, Apache is kind of left behind in its niche. Its userbase is nothing to scoff at though, people will be using in 15 years from now, still
Edited 2010-01-07 14:36 UTC
Yeah no one writes in PHP anymore
From you its not surprising.
lol
Anime News Network is the only site I visit regularly that I know uses nginx. I know because every now then I get an error message that prevents me from actually seeing any pages until I reset my cookies. Now, ANN is looking for BSD gurus to handle server duties, so maybe it’s just a config problem.
It’s about the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The foundation on which the Java ecosystem is practically built around: Tomcat, Ant, Maven, Struts, Lucene, Jackrabbit, Axis, Felix, … Java = Sun (30%) + Apache (30%) + Eclipse (15%) + rest of the world (25%). So yes, they are pretty much innovators and leaders
ASF also has many C/C++ projects, plus projects in other programming languages. And of course the well known HTTP server
Nginx is better at some things than Apache, I agree.
For example, I had to do load balancing the other day with Apache and I looked at the mod_proxy and mod_proxy_balancer in Apache. I deployed Apache’s httpd but then I needed a special feature in the proxy/balancer module, the feature is to move forward to the next balancer when one of the balancer members is not available. And I didn’t found this feature in Apache, then I looked at Nginx and the feature was there.
http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpUpstreamModule
I’m disappointed with Apache for not having this.
Edited 2010-01-07 17:13 UTC