What is your primary use of FreeBSD? (poll)

  • Thread starter Deleted member 54719
  • Start date

In what capacity are you "primarily" using FreeBSD?

  • Professional (payed to program or manage FreeBSD systems)

    Votes: 14 25.0%

  • Hobbyist (use FreeBSD for personal projects or home workstation)

    Votes: 38 67.9%

  • Educational (learning about FreeBSD and/or POSIX systems)

    Votes: 3 5.4%

  • Research (in support of university sponsored research)

    Votes: 1 1.8%
  • Total voters
    56
  • Poll closed .
D

Deleted member 54719

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Based on the content of many of the questions on the FreeBSD forums I would be very interested in the breakdown of the user base: percentage that are professionals, hobbyists, or students. Please participate in the poll below. No need for a lot of comments that may bias the results.
 
Hobbyist.

FreeBSD serves as my primary desktop OS and powers my .mp3 player.
 
While my primary (and currently only) use of FreeBSD is as a hobbyist, I am a professional in the technology field and previously used FreeBSD in a professional capacity (it was the OS for our server and network monitoring system).

I said the above, because you may find that there are quite a few professionals who don't use FreeBSD professionally (at this time).
 
Hobbyist. No other OSes in my home :) (ok, the router is still running OpenWRT)

I have a FreeBSD workstation, a FreeBSD file/music/webserver, a FreeBSD computer dedicated to music and watching TV with a good DAC and audiosystem connected, a laptop and soon a router (which isn't quite ready yet, still learning PF).

Since FreeBSD 4.3 I have had a computer runnning FreeBSD with MOC (music on console) to listen to music through a quality audiosystem. Only change is that, after almost 20 years, I switched from MOC to CMUS (finally understood how it works :cool::beer:).

I run two small businesses, though not in IT.
 
Hello tempest766,
tempest766 said:
It says "primary use". Choose one.
Click to expand...
that sounds unfair, but after some thinking it is not. I have checked "learning" because that was my intention when starting with FreeBSD. Luckily it is useful as well, therefore "hobbyist" applies as the second match which is off topic.
 
Sorry, but I think this poll is kind of flawed. I know you mentioned that you're after primary use but you also stated "percentages that are hobbyists, professionals, etc.". So it's not just primary use, you also seem to conclude that someone is a hobbyist or a professional solely based on their primary use, and that's flawed reasoning.

I get paid to administrate / maintain several FreeBSD systems. This takes up several hours per day. But I also have a FreeBSD server park of my own which I also spend time on. Free time obviously, but that includes part of my vacations.

So.... primary use is definitely personal because that's where I spend most time on. Maybe I'm a little too geeky here but I include the time when my personal server is working hard throughout the night in building my ports, something I sometimes verify first thing in the morning.

But how does that suddenly nullify my professionalism? :D
 
I started as a hobbyist moving from Mark Williams Coherent Unix to FreeBSD 2.05, while using SunOS and later Solaris at work before abandoning the commercial publishing sector and joining an ongoing university research project (free access to law online) using Solaris servers and a mix of Linux and Windows workstations. My first task was installing FreeBSD 4.9 on my Linux workstation :) Now that I'm retired, I selected "hobbyist" for the poll.
 
Personal. I've planned to gravitate from Windows to Linux, but failed to install Gentoo, it was too complex for me. (Yes, I know there are user friendly systems, but I wanted to *understand* how it works). My first FreeBSD install was like Next -> Next -> Hostname -> Next -> Next -> Next -> Timezone -> Next -> Reboot.
 
- Personal laptop (FreeBSD is the only OS)
- Workstation at work (FreeBSD is the only OS)
- Controller at work (BeagleBone Black)
- Personal VPS
- Company VPS
 
ShelLuser said:
Sorry, but I think this poll is kind of flawed. I know you mentioned that you're after primary use but you also stated "percentages that are hobbyists, professionals, etc.". So it's not just primary use, you also seem to conclude that someone is a hobbyist or a professional solely based on their primary use, and that's flawed reasoning.

I get paid to administrate / maintain several FreeBSD systems. This takes up several hours per day. But I also have a FreeBSD server park of my own which I also spend time on. Free time obviously, but that includes part of my vacations.

So.... primary use is definitely personal because that's where I spend most time on. Maybe I'm a little too geeky here but I include the time when my personal server is working hard throughout the night in building my ports, something I sometimes verify first thing in the morning.

But how does that suddenly nullify my professionalism? :D
Click to expand...

Then I guess you have a choice to make. Answer the question according to how you see yourself, or how you think I want you to answer. Thus the problem with polls in general, when respondents try to read between the lines it usually invalidates them as part of the sample being collected.
 
"Research (in support of university sponsored research)" makes no sense at all. Either one does OS research and uses one of BSDs for that (IIRC the last truly academic paper written based on the research done on BSDs is McKusick, Marshall Kirk; Ganger, Gregory R. (1999). "Soft Updates: A Technique for Eliminating Most Synchronous Writes in the Fast Filesystem" written almost 20 years ago or you invent a novel CS concept and use one of BSDs as a test bed.

Putting bunch of data used in academic research on the FreeBSD file server in a university setting is no different than putting porn pictures to run XXX related business.
 
Oko said:
"Research (in support of university sponsored research)" makes no sense at all. Either one does OS research and uses one of BSDs for that (IIRC the last truly academic paper written based on the research done on BSDs is McKusick, Marshall Kirk; Ganger, Gregory R. (1999). "Soft Updates: A Technique for Eliminating Most Synchronous Writes in the Fast Filesystem" written almost 20 years ago or you invent a novel CS concept and use one of BSD as a test bed.

Putting bunch of data used in academic research on the FreeBSD file server in a university setting is no different than ..
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the FreeBSD Magazine issue Science, Systems and FreeBSD (September/October 2014). It stressed how UFS was great for storing data, and quick access (I know Hammer and ZFS come to people's mind). I expected more from it, like depth of science programs. That reminds me of how an analog storage tape holds data, even for MIDI instruments
 
Hobbyist. Having used Windows then Linux, I now use FreeBSD as my primary OS. What was simple curiosity has turned into an appreciation of the configuration necessary just to get a simple desktop installed and permissions set. FreeBSD encourages learning. I happen to enjoy that.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Based on your experience orrrrr......:)
Click to expand...
Actually yes:) I do run FreeBSD file servers for a premier AI research group at a major research university and I do have a schoolmate (childhood friend) who was for a while in business of putting XXX pictures on line back in Europe before switching to being full time iPhone app developer. We started on his Amiga 500, 30 years ago. I got him into the BSDs shit 15 years ago. His Porn cites did run of FreeBSD powered servers. He made good money from porn.
 
Hobbyist. I would like to use FreeBSD at company. But I can not use it because my coworkers could not read English messages. Luckily they can not find where I spend my spare time. Yeah!
In addition, there are many "*linux" in the world. So I only use FreeBSD because I don't need to think which *linux I should use. (Finding my *linux may be time-consuming.)
 
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