The Distrowatch BSD ranking

bobmc

bobmc

Not sure why BSD is included in the Distrowatch ranking. I thought it was mainly for Linux. Perhaps any free operating system available for download could be included. Just idle curiosity.

OSRankHits Per Day
FreeBSD28353
GhostBSD37285
DragonFly75168
OpenBSD80157
 
Thanks

<https://distrowatch.com/freebsd> we have BSD alongside Linux at the head of the page, and so on.

Missing from the list of related websites:
– I'll arrange changes.

On 2021-04-22 4:37 p.m., Graham Perrin wrote:

> Hi
>
> At <https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=freebsd> for example,
>
> <https://www.freebsd.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsd.org/>
>
> <https://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists.html>
>
> <https://forums.freebsd.org/> in lieu of
> <http://forums.freebsd.org/>
>
> <https://www.freebsd.org/docs/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html>
>
> <https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/mirrors/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html>
> (an outdated edition of the FreeBSD Handbook)
>
> <http://www.freebsdwiki.net/> should go (terribly outdated, and
> FreeBSD has its own wiki)
>
> <https://www.freebsdnews.com/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsdnews.net/> (redirect)
>
> <https://blogs.freebsdish.org/> server not found
>
> <https://www.freebsddiary.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsddiary.org/>
>
> <http://freebsd-custom.wikidot.com/> should probably go (terribly
> outdated)
>
> <https://www.freebsdmall.com/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsdmall.com/>
>
> <https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry Pi> in lieu of
> <https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/Raspberry Pi>
>
> <http://www.virtualbsd.info/> should go (visually empty, technically
> blocked by Malwarebytes Browser Guard)
>
> <https://www.freshports.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freshports.org/>
>
> <https://www.freebsdsoftware.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/>
>
> <http://bsdnexus.com/> in lieu of
> <http://forums.bsdnexus.com/> (redirect)
>
> <https://freebsdfoundation.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/>
>
> <http://bsdsupport.org/> must go (redirect; no longer FreeBSD-related;
> maybe suspicious)
>
> <http://www.onlamp.com/bsd/> should go (redirect; no longer
> FreeBSD-specific)
>
> <http://bxr.su/> should probably go (searches no longer work)
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD> in lieu of
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD>
>
> <http://www.gufi.org/> should probably go (nothing new for more than
> five years)
>
> <https://www.bsdforen.de/> in lieu of
> <http://www.bsdforen.de/>
>
> <https://www.bsdguru.org/> in lieu of
> <http://www.bsdguru.org/>
>
> Thank you
 
At one time, and also maybe currently, Distrowatch has been hosted using FreeBSD. They also have a category for Solaris, and another one for other operating systems. If you go to search, you'll find these categories. Minix is listed under other, though, it's as Dormant.

The title says: "Use Linux, BSD".
 
bobmc said:
Not sure why BSD is included in the Distrowatch ranking. I thought it was mainly for Linux. Perhaps any free operating system available for download could be included. Just idle curiosity.

OSRankHits Per Day
FreeBSD28353
GhostBSD37285
DragonFly75168
OpenBSD80157
NetBSD16050
Click to expand...
There's also NetBSD... I filled in the table in the quote for details:

NetBSD actually makes major contributions to the world of Open Source (Even the GNU project has adopted NetBSD-sourced code for hardware drivers), but it does take being a grizzled dev to appreciate the impact - THIS is what it takes to be able to run Open Source and free stuff on newer devices. Everything else is just eye candy. Even Apache will run just about anywhere. :cool:
 
eternal_noob said:
It even runs on a toaster.
Click to expand...
I was laughing about that back in 2003 :p. Nowadays, I want my toasters to be dumb, and have no OS - best way to have some privacy. Otherwise, Apple will have their servers full of audio recordings of my cussing them out for their insistence on being the shot-caller over my damn toaster. All I have to do is to rant for 5 minutes, and set it on an audio loop, and aim the speakers at my toaster.
 
astyle said:
I was laughing about that back in 2003 :p. Nowadays, I want my toasters to be dumb, and have no OS - best way to have some privacy. Otherwise, Apple will have their servers full of audio recordings of my cussing them out for their insistence on being the shot-caller over my damn toaster. All I have to do is to rant for 5 minutes, and set it on an audio loop, and aim the speakers at my toaster.
Click to expand...
I will never forget that JUISER which connected to the internet for just perssing a packet
It used the internet to scan the qr code on juice packets and verify that they are made by them selfs
it got a 120 mil$ funding ?
 
grahamperrin said:
Missing from the list of related websites:
Click to expand...
I just realised, UnitedBSD is already listed as an alternative to FreeBSD Forums, but the link is to the entire forum (not the FreeBSD sub-forum):

1644363107250.png


What other corrections should be made to the page?

For example: UltraSPARC seems wrong, it's not tabled at <https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/>.
 
sidetone said:
… maybe currently, Distrowatch has been hosted using FreeBSD. …
Click to expand...

Amongst answers to frequently asked questions, under <https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=faq#mydistro>:

… The DistroWatch web server is currently running on a dedicated machine powered by FreeBSD. Previously we had been running Debian since late 2007; before then it was running on FreeBSD 5 and 6 (October 2004 - October 2007) and Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 "Woody".
Click to expand...

FreeBSD has a long and turbulent history and is colloquially (categorised as) a major distribution:

1644368488011.png
 
It's strange that daemonforums.org is not listed instead of unitedbsd.com, it's more than 10 years older.
but the link is to the entire forum (not the FreeBSD sub-forum)
Click to expand...
The visitor may want to participate in the general section.
 
Okay, website title and the forum sections seem to be totally focused on BSD. I didn't bother to check the content.
 
CuatroTorres said:
… strange that daemonforums.org is not listed …
Click to expand...

It's listed, but not where you'd expect. From an e-mail sent a few hours earlier:

Hi

<https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=freebsd>

Alternative user forums

UnitedBSD can be more specific:
FreeBSD - UnitedBSD <https://www.unitedbsd.com/t/freebsd>

DaemonForums and BSDForen.de (German) are also alternatives, these two links can be moved up (from the related websites part of the table).

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
DW is so phony on some (Linux) distro pages it's sick.. I've seen clear vote rigging comment spamming and other such crap. Don't get me wrong, it's a very useful site, but there are too many jokers pulling strings with votes, hit counts, and user reviews.
 
penguinslayer said:
DW is so phony on some (Linux) distro pages it's sick.. I've seen clear vote rigging comment spamming and other such crap. Don't get me wrong, it's a very useful site, but there are too many jokers pulling strings with votes, hit counts, and user reviews.
Click to expand...
The cookie banner with forced consent is a red flag. Who keeps on using rhat? They probably take money for a position roo.
 
penguinslayer said:
DW is so phony on some (Linux) distro pages it's sick.. I've seen clear vote rigging comment spamming and other such crap. Don't get me wrong, it's a very useful site, but there are too many jokers pulling strings with votes, hit counts, and user reviews.
Click to expand...
MG said:
The cookie banner with forced consent is a red flag. Who keeps on using rhat?
Click to expand...
scottro said:
DistroWatch has frequently said to not take their ratings too seriously and given the way they make them. So, I wouldn't blame DistroWatch.
Click to expand...
At least we know. Though, it was always based on activity from their site. They need a better metric though. While they don't do it on purpose, the metric used gives it some blame. I wouldn't do too much to artificially lift one OS, but perhaps only in response to equalizing. Though, much of the clicks are genuine, bc actual people who are interested in OS's, including BSD go there.
 
scottro said:
DistroWatch has frequently said to not take their ratings too seriously and given the way they make them. So, I wouldn't blame DistroWatch.
Click to expand...
No, I blame the anonymous lamers who abuse proxies to fsck with the comments, ratings, views, etc.

@ sidetone,
[...]"Though, much of the clicks are genuine, bc actual people who are interested in OS's, including BSD go there."

Views are easily skewed by lamers hammering the site behind proxies.

I once ran a simple test with one Linux distro whose reviews/ratings/votes are obviously artificially curated by lamers and I had a negative review (honest one at that) rated so high they couldn't spam the comment rating down fast enough so they just had the negative review deleted. After that test and with a few other observations, I decided not to take anything there which could be affected by the lamer army seriously.

It's a great site otherwise, I still visit it and look forward to updates from the admins.
 
A percentage of ratings are genuine. There are trolls who artificially lower ratings of comments, and who inflate value of their os. It could also be for a particular flavor of Linux, which maybe some are helping for it to survive. Also, those Linux flavors fight with other Linux flavors (for those who want to use technical terms, you know what I mean: distributions which use the Linux kernel). Still, FreeBSD is high up there on Distrowatch despite those skewed likely for Linux results. Maybe FreeBSD is in comparison not to all of Linux, but to many somewhat popular Linux distributions. Maybe we need a BSD/illuminos-Watch.

To delve more into comment ratings, that happens often with what you described, and from troll farms. It also happens with real life events: wars, industries (medical, debt/banking/financial, education), political parties. They have books (warning or informing) about this including on propaganda. Not sure if what you described of drowning comments can be considered propaganda, but by some reach at least it has similarities, though that is nothing severe, as it's only to improve marketshare of open source products. On FreeBSD forums, there aren't down votes or thumbs down for user comments, bc that obviously tends to get abused. Maybe a forum there would offer a more balanced and fair approach than that form of comment post.

I know the role from DistroWatch isn't intentional. It's also better than nothing, as it has a lot of value.
 
sidetone said:
A percentage of ratings are genuine.
Click to expand...

Indeed. :)

sidetone said:
[...] Maybe a forum there would offer a more balanced and fair approach than that form of comment post.
Click to expand...

Yes, possibly. But from the smell of some of the lamer armies, you'd get a lot of 4chan type of people there poisoning the well for the lulz. Even though I'm not much of a redditor and it's also open for abuse, I still dip into /r/linux pretty much every day. But don't forget /r/freebsd, /r/bsd, and /r/openbsd!
 
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