FreeBSD Popularity

Frank Shute frank at shute.org.uk
Mon Mar 1 05:35:16 UTC 2010


On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 09:13:25PM +0100, Martin Tournoij wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 12:49:23PM -0600, Brandon Falk wrote:
> 
> > Why is it that FreeBSD is so far behind Linux in popularity? The fact 
> > that lots of companies are not very supportive of FreeBSD (ex. NVIDIA 
> > and ATI 64-bit drivers) is really starting to bother me.
> 
> The reason there are no 64bit nVidia drivers is because the FreeBSD kernel is
> missing some features that are needed for this. (I believe there are beta
> 64bit drivers now though?).
> In any case, it is hardly fair to blame nvidia.

I have to leap to nvidia's defense also. They worked hard with the
FreeBSD team to come up with a 64-bit driver which I'm currently
running without problems on AMD64: x11/nvidia-driver

> 
> > I guess I would like to have a bit of a discussion of what could be improved
> > to increase the popularity of FreeBSD.
> 
> Nothing. FreeBSD has no plans or illusions to take over the world.

Correct. It's minding it's own business
> 
> > Any opinions/ideas on this situation?
> 
> There is no situation.

I've seen Linux go from quite a nice OS to one that is dominated by a
few individual companies: RH, IBM, Novell.

I don't want that to happen with FreeBSD. If it does; NetBSD here I
come ;)

To be honest, I think the licence puts off most of the commercial
entities. Which is a *good* thing.


Regards,

-- 

 Frank

 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html




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