Activate your BSD Stats (plus Poll)

Are you submitting your BSD stats?

  • Maybe later

    Votes: 1 100.0%
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    1
DutchDaemon

DutchDaemon

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From FreeBSD-announce:

Status:

As of this posting, we are getting reports in from all the *BSD variants:

Code: 
   PCBSD              4 872
   FreeBSD            1 627
   DesktopBSD           154
   NetBSD                43
   OpenBSD               15
   DragonflyBSD          14
   MidnightBSD            3
   MirBSD                 3

Country wise, we are seeing reports from 102 countries, with the top 10
countries currently being:

Code: 
   United States      1 421 (popular: PCBSD)
   Russian Federation   648 (popular: PCBSD)
   Germany              459 (popular: PCBSD)
   Panama               451 (popular: FreeBSD)
   Australia            328 (popular: FreeBSD)
   Ukraine              307 (popular: PCBSD)
   Japan                232 (popular: PCBSD)
   United Kingdom       190 (popular: PCBSD)
   Italy                174 (popular: PCBSD)
   France               169 (popular: PCBSD)

For more information on the project, please visit http://www.bsdstats.org

The sites includes basic instructions for installing / running on the
various *BSDs ...
Click to expand...

The sysutils/bsdstats port makes it very easy for you. Just install it, and it will ask you some questions on how to run:

Code: 
Would you like to activate monthly reporting in /etc/periodic.conf [n]? y
Would you like to send a list of installed hardware as well [n]? y
Would you like to send a list of installed ports as well [n]? y
Would you like to run it now [y]? y
Posting monthly OS statistics to rpt.bsdstats.org

If running as a desktop, or on a laptop, it is recommended that you
enable bsdstats within /etc/rc.conf, so that it will run on reboot.

This will ensure that even if your computer is off when monthly runs,
your computer will be properly counted.

Would you like to activate reporting on reboot in /etc/rc.conf [n]? ..

That's all there is to it. Now let's boost those FreeBSD figures!

(also note that http://www.bsdstats.org provides a great way to check out which devices work well with *BSD. E.g. choose 'FreeBSD' from the pull-down menu (top right) and visit the Device Stats page)
 
Added a poll, please fill out. Feel free to comment here.
 
This has been around for a very, very long time. But I never seem to have bothered with it. I'll see if I can register a few machines :e
 
Exactly my sentiment ;) It looks like PC-BSD has it auto-installed, and IIRC, it used to be that way on FreeBSD long ago (I seem to remember a 'semi-automatic' option for it?).
 
No, PCBSD asks users during installation, if they want to submit stats.
You can turn it off during install.

I believe that is the reason, why PC-BSD has so high stats.
 
Yeah, that's how it used to be on FreeBSD as well.
 
I do not see a point in such voluntary statistics as it shows completely different outcome than it really is. The only good statistics are observational (if done correct) there is always an error in the results but its much closer to reality. And by 'observational' I mean data mining robots 'running' around web. Good example would be netcraft.com surveys, for example recent netcraft survey came to conclusion that most stable hosting company is/was http://www.datapipe.net running FreeBSD.
 
I don't think BSDstats serves any other purpose than to compare the BSD's (and to get a nice overview of what types of hardware work and which ports are popular). It's not intended as a global BSD marketshare calculator, and it's questionable whether Netcraft can claim to be that either, because Netcraft works on the basis of submissions as well, if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't actively scan every webserver out there (and the information is only superficial (OS, webserver, uptime) and can be fooled easily).
 
DutchDaemon said:
I don't think BSDstats serves any other purpose than to compare the BSD's (and to get a nice overview of what types of hardware work and which ports are popular). It's not intended as a global BSD marketshare calculator, and it's questionable whether Netcraft can claim to be that either, because Netcraft works on the basis of submissions as well, if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't actively scan every webserver out there (and the information is only superficial (OS, webserver, uptime) and can be fooled easily).
Click to expand...

It does not matter what exactly bsdstats compares, you simply cant come to any conclusion with the way the data is collected (or because lack of data).

Regarding Netcraft, they rent machines in several data centers all over the world to run their data collectors (robots).

In the May 2010 survey we received responses from 206,026,787 sites.
Click to expand...

Now thats a big portion of the net.. And their methods are pretty reliable as a lot of specialists agree. At least I fallow their reports closely.
 
This thread prompted me to finally install it on my FreeBSD workstation. :)

Curious to know why Australia and Panama have much higher FreeBSD numbers compared to PC-BSD...

If some of these web browser popularity trackers looked for fetch(3)'s User-Agent string we might get a clearer picture of how wide spread FreeBSD is. :)
 
@expl, the stated goal is:

Code: 
What is BSD-Stats ?

This is a sampling of users of the given BSD operating systems that [B]opted in[/B] to 
install a data collection program. It is [B]not representative in any way[/B] of the total 
population of users/installations of the given BSD operating systems.

Specifically, we are trying to produce numbers for four groups:

    * Hardware Purchases
    * Hardware Vendors
    * Driver Maintainers
    * Ports Maintainers

[B]for support (ie. hardware drivers) purposes[/B].

In other words: no representative sample is attempted, and gathering 'inside data' (hardware, software) is the main goal. This will no doubt help developers, porters, and maybe even vendors focus their efforts.
 
And for a long time it's only hardware and drivers. There was only a brief time when ports statistic was shown. ;( Not useful for ports contributers and maintainers.
 
Oh ok, I don't even know what the actual output is. But note that there are also hardware drivers in the ports tree, so that might be the connection. I think it's fair to say that the more people that run bsdstats (including, or even especially those on laptops and notebooks), the better the hardware support will eventually be. So I'd like to see those numbers go up fast (already over 300 more since this thread started, btw).
 
I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.
 
oliverh said:
I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.
Click to expand...
You might be right, but I for one installed it purely out of passion for FreeBSD. Plus my country showed only one measly FreeBSD system! At least there are two now. ;)
 
oliverh said:
I deinstalled it a long time ago as many others. If you see any real-world use apart from hype then you can call me names. But beware, I earn my money with stats.
Click to expand...

I asked scrappy@ to chime in and tell us what BSD stats are actually used for.
 
Just set it up on 2 of my FreeBSD machines, 1 more to go

My business FreeBSD machine and a p4 jail machine at the house are set up. I am currently building a kde4 desktop machine, when that is done compiling(its a lowly p4 also) I will install it also.

<Dan> watch's the chipmunks having heat stroke as they run the power wheel for the second day of compiles(xorg was yesterday).
 
This application has no man page, it's website displays conflicting data.

Compare http://www.bsdstats.org/
freebsd count to
http://www.bsdstats.org/bt/home.html?os=FreeBSD count.

The website ports report is disabled. There was a long time error that
caused all the data to be reported under panama that was just addressed
2 weeks ago after someone reported his country total did not increase after
running bsdstats for the first time.

Also looks like freebsd systems are being counted 2 times, once in the
freebsd bucket and once in the pcbsd bucket.

What about security for the reporting system? Nowhere does it inform the
user or viewer about how the reporting system captures info and if the
sender’s ip address or domain name is recorded.

The bottom line is this port should have never have been allowed in the port
system without a man page, who ever is administrating the website is doing a
very poor job, testing to verify reporting systems are being categorized
correctly was never done.

AND into this MESS you are recommending people participate.

I may agree with the general goals, but until it at least meets minimum
standards for a competent website, I would not risk my privacy. Just think of
the havoc a hacker could do if network location information is saved. He would
know what ip address to direct a attack at that ran software with know bugs.
A man page describing the application in detail and a website that also
explains it self better are mandatory elements. What a clever way to harvest
information for directing attacks on Freebsd systems some time in the future.

The only thing that would make me comfortable with this application, would be
having the freebsd security team do a security review of the complete bsdstats
remote software, server and website to verify no personal information or
location identification information was being harvested and the complete
environment had a acceptable level of protection from snooping and break-ins,
and they issued a statement to that fact.

USER BE WARE......
 
This forum has 13,405 members.

In 2007 I looked at how many people posted to the FreeBSD maillist: 13,566 (http://forums.bsdnexus.com/viewtopic.php?pid=14623#p14623)

BSDStats has 8,160 computers (not users!) for all BSD's (Not just FreeBSD!). This number seems to be very very far away from the real number.
8,160 is next to nothing. To put it in perspective: Apple sold more than 1 million iPads already.
So, if anything, this is more damaging then helpful. Assuming someone takes this number seriously that is.

I disabled bsdstats on all my computers after one of my machines rebooted without internet for some reason and it got hung on the bsdstats rc.d startup script. Since it's fairly useless anyway I decided that was a good moment to stop using it.

There are many better ways to get an approximate count of the number of BSD machines:
- Look at the number of active people on forums, maillists, etc.
- Look at cvsup stats
- Netcraft
- Unique hits on the FreeBSD handbook
- ... etc ...
 
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