How many desktop BSD users are there? reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- letterafterl14 · 2018-07-20 17:54 Yes, I know MacOS X has literally tens of millions of users so for the sake of this I won't count that in. I do know however that Linus Torvalds projected (som time ago, I think it was in 2005) that there were ~350,000 FreeBSD users, ~8,000 OpenBSD users, and ~1,500 NetBSD users. Of course, times change and more BSD distros exist so of course that's probably going to be wrong. Anyone here have any figures or guesses on the number of desktop BSD users out there? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jaypatelani · 2018-07-20 18:53 It's difficult to get idea regarding this. http://bsdstats.org/ tried it but it's not accurate because *BSDs don't have it in base install and users might not install it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- letterafterl14 · 2018-07-20 19:23 As well as the fact it's labelled as a "data collection program". Yea, good luck getting an OpenBSD user to sign up to that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blackhaz2 · 2018-07-20 21:47 Interesting question. I don't know the answer but I write this from a ThinkPad running FreeBSD 11. I have recently discovered Plank, so with xfce4, Macbuntu icons, b00merang High Sierra theme, and a few tweaks, I feel 2018 is the year where my FreeBSD desktop is near perfection. Just a few steps away from being ready to take over the throne of my primary desktop machine from MacBook Pro, and, I believe, MacOS is the ultimate GUI experience out there. There are still rough edges, but a big portion of my daily workflow is replicated almost flawlessly in FreeBSD, and I am surprised to feel right at home with everything. Dock apps: Double Commander for Disk Order Mousepad for TextEdit (Brackets would be really cool!) Galculator for MacOS' calculator widget Xfce Terminal and Thunar are my Terminal and Finder Thunderbird, Firefox, Chromium, LibreOffice - you know, the standard. Krita is almost Photoshop-quality What I really miss: Dashboard (xfce's Alt+Tab) activated by a hot corner. Xfdashboard is slow for me. GUI pkg frontend. (Gotta try octopkg). Firefox still renders some fonts improperly - anti-aliasing issues. Wi-Fi connection manager (networkmgr needs more love.) I'm super-excited for what the BSD desktop future holds for us if that quality of desktop experience is available already! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-07-20 22:17 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2018-07-20 23:11 You mean this one? https://linus-torvalds.livejournal.com/616.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-07-21 02:07 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- letterafterl14 · 2018-07-21 09:07 yea, i mean that post. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 09:36 There is no such thing as a BSD distro. Quit calling it that Linux user. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- letterafterl14 · 2018-07-21 09:37 I don't use Linux. Also, I heard somewhere on this sub that PC-BSD is indeed a "distro" of FreeBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 09:37 So there's one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 09:44 PC-BSD is dead but, in any case, it's FreeBSD with a bunch of applications tacked on that you can do yourself. Not like Linux which is a kernel with a bunch of everything else tacked on by by who knows who. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 12:24 According to [netmarketshare](https://netmarketshare.com/operating- system-market-share.aspx?options=%7B"filter"%3A%7B"%24and"%3A%5B%7B"de viceType"%3A%7B"%24in"%3A%5B"Desktop%2Flaptop"%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C"dateL abel"%3A"Trend"%2C"attributes"%3A"share"%2C"group"%3A"platform"%2C"sor t"%3A%7B"share"%3A- 1%7D%2C"id"%3A"platformsDesktop"%2C"dateInterval"%3A"Monthly"%2C"dateS tart"%3A"2017-07"%2C"dateEnd"%3A"2018-06"%2C"segments"%3A"-1000"%7D) BSD desktop share s around 0,01% (so around 400000 BSD desktop users on a average 4 bilion world Internet users estimation) and growing. I use BSDs (years ago FreeBSD only, now all of them, but FreeBSD+NetBSD mainly) on desktop/laptop since I was 17, preceeded by OpenSolaris since I was 14, Illumos more recently. Never seen a great appeal in Linux, outside better hardware support, which I don't happen to need. I quit gaming seriously when I was a teen, so I haven't felt the need to switch back to Windows since then ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 12:31 TrueOS, pfSense, HardenedBSD, FreeNAS and what else are FreeBSD distros, in quality of distributions of the FreeBSD operating system. Same goes for Illumos, which, in spite of being a full OS by it own too, is only shipped as distributions acccompanied by 3rd party software. Same debate can be carried out about LibertyBSD, Bitrig, Isotop for OpenBSD or EdgeBSD, miniBSD, irBSD for NetBSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Xerxero · 2018-07-21 14:30 I use FreeBSD as web dev with IntelliJ idea. Works fine so far. Windows for games and graphic stuff that does not work. Blender and dark table really misses the graphic acceleration. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- johnklos · 2018-07-21 15:08 At least two dozen. Also, there's a huge difference between desktop users and users. I take care of dozens of BSD machines, but only a few are set up as desktop machines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Arsspeak · 2018-07-21 16:07 I tried DragonflyBSD on my laptop the other day Does that count 2? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- avatar4d · 2018-07-21 16:29 IIRCC, it didn't distinguish between desktop and server use anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- avatar4d · 2018-07-21 16:33 IIRCC, it didn't distinguish between desktop and server use anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bit_of_hope · 2018-07-21 17:29 I have laptops running OpenBSD and NetBSD. All of my servers also run either of the two exclusively. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 19:06 This is what people say who have no understanding of the differences between a Linux distro and FreeBSD. They think FreeBSD with attached applications is the same thing as a Linux kernel with applications attached to that. They think FreeBSD is a kernel only. Then they make statements like you and he just did. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 19:22 Hey, I've been using FreeBSD for 6 years so far, studied Porter and Developer Handbooks, ported some smaller utils, wrote tutorials, deployed servers, and in relation to your statements I know what make buildkernel and make buildworld stand for... there's a difference between telling 'FreeBSD is a BSD distro' which is incorrect, and 'TrueOS is a FreeBSD distro' which from my point of view, is correct. I'm not a Linux fan, don't see any appeal in it, and never used it. Yes, Linux is a kernel, FreeBSD is an OS. Now feel free to to criticize as much as you'd like but a distribution is not what you think it is; it doesn't mandatory imply a kernel+3rd party userland, it can also mean OS (kernel+native userland)+additional 3rd party software (e.g. GhostBSD). As I mentioned above, [Illumos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumos) is an operating system too and yet it's redistributed as distributions. FreeDOS is a full operating system and yet it has several distributions which add further utils: XFDOS, CarbonOS, N2KOS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 19:48 It's full of OpenBSD desktop users on /u/phessler's bsd.network mastodon instance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 19:52 > a distribution is not what you think it is The word is "distro", not distribution, and is a Linux-ism for the Linux kernel distributed with different programs attached. FreeBSD has no such thing. So back at ya' from a guy who's been programming FreeBSD for 14 years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 19:54 TrueOS does come with it preinstalled, so the bsdstats *BSD OS ratio does clearly suffer from a bias; ) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 20:10 So you're saying that distro as short typo for distribution is a Linuxism? Fair, I can live with that, even though I saw the 2 terms being used indifferently so many times since I've ever used Internet, that I had started using them interchangeably too, sometimes sticking with 'distro' for a matter of convenience. In my mind distro/distribution means just a set of software redistributed together as an operating system, devoid of any Linux-related meaning. Thinking it over, yes, 'distro' as a term is always related to Linux systems, so I'll give you that, distro and distributions have different meanings. But please,moderate your tone, and do not make assumptions on people's competence that easily ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-21 20:27 I have never heard experienced BSD users ever use the term distro and correcting people is the norm. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- illumosguy · 2018-07-21 20:52 You won't cease at being so hostile,will you? If you have indeed 14 years of development experience with FreeBSD you should be way older than me and yet you behave like that? Don't you get I, as a long term, devoted fellow user, share your same point of view in regard of FreeBSD and that I was trying to gently tell you're true, recon my mistake, in spite of your aggressive tone? It's nomenclature we were talking about here, not a very significant debate, and you get mad like that? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vvelox · 2018-07-21 23:20 > Firefox still renders some fonts improperly - anti-aliasing issues. I am curious, what issues are you having? Good font rendering by default is one of the things I've actually really enjoyed about FreeBSD for a very long time here. Took a long while for Linux to get there because of bad selection of what to install and how to configure them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blackhaz2 · 2018-07-22 06:30 Perhaps my font configuration. I really tried everything I could and could not find the issue. Many small fonts (like, 7-9 pt) are not anti-aliased at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-22 10:12 You are a very weak person. You've realized your mistake. Just let it go. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ben_bai · 2018-07-23 14:26 BSD distro is about as wrong/right as LCD display. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thatstevelord · 2018-07-23 15:36 I run OpenBSD desktop on an i3 NUC. I also ran FreeBSD for a few years on a laptop, and am considering getting a Thinkpad Carbon X1 to replace an ageing Macbook pro with OpenBSD. I'd like to run NetBSD on a desktop/laptop but it's been so long since I had a PPC desktop running it, I don't have the time to learn it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- womble6969 · 2018-07-25 21:06 Can I ask, why did you decide to quit gaming? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kernigh · 2018-07-25 21:15 The "D" in BSD means distribution, or distro. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kernigh · 2018-07-25 21:19 bsdstats.org seems to be a monthly cron job. It would count servers that are always on, but not count desktops that get turned off when the job is scheduled. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-25 21:45 Again (and again and again and again) I have to explain it to you ... people. A "distro" is a Linux term that does NOT mean "distribution" and the Berkley Software Distribution was a copy of ATT Unix that Berkley handed out to people, or in the words of people who understand English, distributed **one identical copy** among people. Not like Linux' variety of different things using the Linux kernel. I'm not expecting redditors to understand such high level understanding. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-07-25 22:09 > Anyone here have any figures or guesses on the number of desktop BSD users out there? I have OpenBSD 6.3-current running on a ThinkPad T430s, a ThinkCentre M92p, and a G4 iLamp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kernigh · 2018-07-26 01:59 The Linux community doesn't own the word "distro". A distribution of Linux is almost the same as a distribution of BSD or illumos -- it has an installer, bootloader, kernel, command shell, disk formatter, network setup tool, text editor, X11, and so on. When I say that something is a "distro" of BSD or illumos, I don't think about Linux. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- icantthinkofone · 2018-07-26 09:29 Again and again and again you show what an uneducated moron you are. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pet84rik · 2018-08-02 23:39 I do not believe in such low figures for Open and NetBSD. I believe it is approx million fbsd users and at least few tens of 1000s for both open and net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dd_fff · 2018-08-03 09:56 It only shows that OpenBSD users usually don't install unnecessary crap on their boxes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac_Alpine · 2018-08-18 04:43 I’m quite late in reading this, but how is your touchpad experience and battery life? Those are the two things that keep me coming back to macOS for my laptops. Specific to the touchpad I love switching workspaces with the 4-finger horizontal swipe and the two finger double tap to automatically fit text to the screen size ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blackhaz2 · 2018-08-18 05:49 Yeah.. Battery life sucks and I am still yet to find a laptop that has nice touchpad experience. You’re also spot on the gestures. Going to try a refurbished ThinkPad X1 to see if this helps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac_Alpine · 2018-08-18 06:22 Alright, that’s more or less what I was expecting Thanks for the quick reply!