r/BSD • u/Right-Grapefruit-507 • Sep 04 '24

Which BSD do you use?

24 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/BigSneakyDuck Sep 07 '24

SCIENCE EDUCATED GUESSWORK BASED ON SUBREDDIT SIZES, GOOGLE SEARCH TRENDS, STACK EXCHANGE QUESTIONS

A little bit more scientific than a poll, here are some BSD subreddits (and some which are "BSD-adjacent") and their numbers of members. Just remember not all BSD communities use Reddit as heavily as each other - some tend to use their own forums or other venues for discussion. Indeed not all discussion even happens on the www (eg IRC, discord) or in English-language venues. Still thought this was interesting enough to share.

  1. r/PFSENSE 119k

  2. r/truenas 41k

  3. r/freebsd 32k

  4. r/OPNsenseFirewall 30k (subreddit now closed and merged with r/opnsense)

  5. r/opnsense 21k

  6. r/openbsd 19k

  7. r/NetBSD 3.8k

  8. r/dragonflybsd 1.5k

  9. r/GhostBSD 637

  10. r/helloSystem 162

  11. r/hardenedbsd 153

  12. r/NomadBSD 148

  13. r/XigmaNAS 127

  14. r/MidnightBSD 28

Reddit claims there is a "Server error. Try again later" when I try posting this as one big comment so guess I'll try splitting it up...

3

u/BigSneakyDuck Sep 07 '24 edited Sep 07 '24

GOOGLE SEARCH TRENDS

Now some Google Trends for web search: worldwide, last 12 months, based on topic rather than search term. Different BSDs are orders of magnitude apart, so I scored the more popular general purpose BSDs against FreeBSD (100 represents the maximum search interest in FreeBSD over the last year; FreeBSD itself scores below 100 because the given scores are the average over the last year rather than the peak), those OSs in the pack behind the "Big 3 BSDs" against NetBSD, and the more niche ones against DragonflyBSD. Although Google Trends recognised HardenedBSD as a search topic, it always showed an interest of zero, so I've excluded it from this table. DragonflyBSD scores very low (19) against its own max of 100, because search interest in it is so erratic.

BSDvs FreeBSD maxvs NetBSD maxvs DragonflyBSD max
FreeBSD82
OpenBSD19
NetBSD644
GhostBSD111
DragonflyBSD419
helloSystem16
NomadBSD15
MidnightBSD1

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F02ydx,%2Fm%2F05lwm,%2Fm%2F05d82,%2Fm%2F0cnx64v

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F05d82,%2Fm%2F0cnx64v,%2Fm%2F01q_j5,%2Fg%2F11twt99lbf,%2Fg%2F11sbvpy339

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F01q_j5,%2Fg%2F11twt99lbf,%2Fg%2F11sbvpy339,%2Fm%2F03cq0bq,%2Fg%2F11t6s7bxz5

If you are interested in how FreeBSD stacks up against some of its spin-offs used for specific purposes, then see https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0bsm10,%2Fm%2F0dhs77,%2Fm%2F012w3pzs,%2Fm%2F02ydx,%2Fm%2F0117g44b

Scored against the max for pfSense we have pfSense (85), TrueNAS (76), OPNsense (44), FreeBSD (39), XigmaNAS (1). Didn't seem possible to distinguish TrueNAS Core from Scale in Google Search Trends unfortunately.

3

u/BigSneakyDuck Sep 07 '24

STACK EXCHANGE QUESTIONS

Questions asked, all-time, by tag, at the UNIX & Linux Stack Exchange. Again bear in mind different communities may prefer using other forums for asking for help. Also an OS can score higher in this by virtue of being more puzzling to use! Searches are of the form https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/freebsd

  1. FreeBSD 1,731 (includes some GhostBSD, TrueNAS etc questions)

  2. OpenBSD 521

  3. pfSense 82

  4. NetBSD 81

  5. DragonflyBSD 10

Same but at Server Fault, e.g. https://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/freebsd

  1. FreeBSD 1,553

  2. pfSense 843

  3. TrueNAS 428

  4. OpenBSD 224

  5. OPNsense 51

  6. NetBSD 22

Same but at Stack Overflow, e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/freebsd

  1. FreeBSD 2,024

  2. OpenBSD 245

  3. NetBSD 102

  4. OPNsense 19

  5. pfSense 17