Of course, however, this is a publicly available unlike detailed satellite reports. (numbers are very close however). Also, I’m not quietly sure, that our telemetry includes OS/Platform reliable, especially if some just disabled this telemetry 
Please, elaborate a little more?
Yeah, it means these download counts mean nothing. We need:
which we can’t have.
yes… You need to trust me in that case.. Sorry about that.
However, as I said the numbers are close enough to make decisions..
I don’t understand macOS users though
1 Like
DoubleSpace was part of Dos6.22, allowed you to convert filesystem to use compression (upto twice the hard drive space was quoted).
Was a disaster.
Which is the point I was going to make, but you made it yourself. A lot of hardware of that era spanning from 1995-2015 was garbage made specifically for windows, where Microsoft was doing heavy lifting compensating for the shoddy hardware, that was getting therefore even shoddier, until absolute bottom is reached. It all started with “windows modem” abomination, if you remember, a “modem” that had most of functionality in software, and which would unsync if your CPU was too busy. It went all downhill from there, OEMS stopped caring – works on windows – good enough. And it would work on because of the Microsoft strength – absolutely fabulous backward compatibility. They carried bugs forward for decades as features, because software and hardware now expected and relied on those bugs. Even ducking valve steam deck had to implement silent memory faults handling because windows games developer are complacent and reckless – because windows does not punish them for memory faults, it also swallows them. Against the spec. So now Steam Deck has to conform to behavior of shitty windows to run windows games.
This is to say that yes, consumer hardware from that era is horseshit and only works on windows, because it was tested and validated only on windwows. I is neither compliment to windows nor that hardware.
At some point I stopped buying “gaming” hardware, and switch to much better build workstation motherboards. My gaming rig was built on a super micro workstation board. No issue. It runs FreeBSD now in my brothers basement. Hosts a node too :). And if you look at modern ASUS boards – Armory Crate and other rootkits shipped as features… and people willingly pay money for that.
I lost my train of thought, so I’ll show myself out.
I’m macOS user. What can I clarify?
It’s like buying potatoes and transporting them in a Lamborghini. Please understand me correctly. Any shit hardware will work under Windows (otherwise they will not survive), and, with some probability - under Linux, and likely - not under freeBSD (tested myself).
Under macOS - likely not. All macOS laptops are more expensive than a usual consumer laptop/desktop (no gaming), so..
Of course almost any SOC will got a deal. But they are far more cheaper than any macOS consumer device (hm, maybe I need to put constraints about 3-4 years?).
1 Like
This is a common notion and value proposition heavily depends on the requirements.
if the rock bottom price is a goal - Chromebook are unbeatable. If compatibility with old hardware and drivers – some capture cards, etc – windows will do. macOS is not a standalone OS – you can’t install it on your own hardware, its’ tightly integrated with hardware, drivers, firmware, and services, a lot of hardware was designed to work with macOS. You know, vertical integration and what not. I strongly suggest reading apple security whitepaper – it talks a lot about architecture choices that were made and reasons behind them. PDF is googlable on apple.com
There is a project to reverse engineer apple boot loader and run linux – Asahi linux – but I guess the goal of that project is to get eventually employment at apple of their maintainers and contributor :D, Otherwise I see absolutely no point in it.
A mistake is to consider macOS a Lamborghini. I see it as a Honda Accord. Reliable, excellent user interface, does not get in your way and lets you get shit done. You are not fighting the OS – you are doing what you came there to do. Heck, even while working on Android I was using macOS as my host machine, because alternatives sucked.
With linux – you are fighting constantly, but ultimately winning. With windows – same, but more often windows wins.
Continuing your automotive analogy: in my eyes Windows is a lowered Nissan Altima with LED backglight and straight exhaust, shot struts, and aftermarket oversized rubber band wheels. Linux is a junk yard – you go there and maybe build yourself a car. I don’t have an analogy for FreeBSD. But it’s the only OS with the sane documentation written for humans. You can actually learn from the handbook.
Well, if the goal is to make use for shit hardware – then sure. But I don’t have such goal. I despose of shit hardware. Life it too short to tolerate it. And Mac OS has nothing to do with it – I threw away my fancy Asus motherboard and bough an old supermicro one on eBay for my TrueNAS server. Because I don’t want to touch garbage and fight windmills.
I you compare just raw price per performance – which is an absolutely wrong thing to do – macBooks are still provide better performance per watt, and performance per buck, and per clock. If you also factor integration and software – unbeatable. Note – best value != lowest price. Lowest price is usually worst value.
The way I use MacBooks – I buy one, use it for a year or two and sell on eBay. Then buy a new one. Unlike windows and linux hardware that turns to pumpkin the moment you exit the store - apple hardware keeps value for a long time. As a result, I enjoy excellent experience at a small annual fee. Has been doing it for the past (holy shit) 20+ years, starting with macbook 2006 (or 7).
But that’s not the point. The point is that I spend considerable amount of my life in front of the screen and at the keyboard, 10+ hours a day, so that must be absolute best possible. I’m not looking to save money on this. So this is not luxery, I’m not optimizing costs, I’m maximizing comfort and productively.
Oh, and integration. That stuff works. If it breaks – it’s Apple’s problem, not mine. This is not solely apple benefit – it’s a benefit of a single vendor.
That’s why FreeBSD is awesome – it s a coherent whole system, and windows UI is not too bad either – because it’s a single vendor. Linux – it’s a zoo. Kernel is linux. Userspace – who knows. Desktop environment? Beats me.
You may notice, the linux distributions that are more or less usable come from large enterprises. Redhat, Oracle. They are coherent and made for a purpose. Anyway, this is beside the point.
This has not been the case for quite a while now. At least half a decade.
Anecdotally, I do like to game occasionally, even though it may not seem like it. I like to play Dark Souls III lately. Very relaxing game. Where do I play? On my MacBook Pro M1 Max. but how?! On Steam, in Crossover (It’s based on Wine + game porting toolkit). Runs at 60 FPS. Maybe more – but my display is 60 fps. If you are familiar with dark souls – this shall tell you everything about latency and throughput.
Maybe competitive e-sports won’t work – but I don’t care about it.
So yes. Once you stop optimizing on price and start optimizing value – Macs are unbeatable. For me Macs is a natural choice of a no-nonsense productivity machine that does not get in the way. I too have started on windows, developed for windows, debugged kernel drivers on windows, and I"m not coming back, thank you very much. This is a sample size of one, personal experience.
Those 666 Linux nodes look suspicious. 
Pi-es are the tool of the D… 
Because some using hacks to update themselves.
Are half of the Windows users using hacks to update themselves? It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that Windows is supposedly the largest subsection of users, and while I’m a bit worried of stepping on someones toes, I’d also wager that it’s the group of the least technical users. That’s fine and all, but having half of them game the system by doing their own releases? I find that hard to believe
I hesitate to derail a good argument… but do you think we could have a Linux riscv build in a few years? It seems to be growing fast: I can easily imagine storage appliances starting to ship with it.
Today there are only a handful of SBC vendors if you wanted to try it in your homelab… but some day…
1 Like
I mean with
And their hardware likely will be more reliable and expensive than
and the difference will be as huge as between a cheap random car and Lamborghini
I’m agree. However, I do not think that macbook is designed as a server. So I still feel not comfortable to use a laptop as a server
Of course it isn’t:
You have a correct instinct.
I mean, I guess you could, if you really wanted to – for example, Mac mini standalone, if you need raw compute power at low cost per watt, with some sort of network storage over ethernet or thunderbolt – and I in fact did use 2008 MacBook Pro for 10 years as a home media server with a disk array over firewire 800 – lol – but this is of course not because it was best for the purpose but because it was very old, too slow as a daily machine, but refused to quit 
For a home server FreeBSD is a way to go. Not linux. Not truenas scale. Not Synology or other… devices. Especially not a raspberry pi. Primarily due to coherent design, but also it’s very educational and teaches right things. (And no GPL3 garbage anywhere. This is another relief for those who care)
Just basic x86 server board and freeBSD. TrueNAS Core shall do too. If the goal is stability and appliance-like behavior, of course. If the goal is to become a professional windmill fighter – sure, use linux. if the goal is depression and rage – then windows is perfect.
3 posts were split to a new topic: What OS is for storagenode works better
3 posts were split to a new topic: Using NTFS on other OSes
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Bloom filter bonanza?
You may enable this on NTFS, as well on ZFS.
Just didn’t get a point, why?
As @arrogantrabbit said
These numbers reflect the number of downloads; some nodes may download the same binary multiple times. Since most nodes use storagenode-updater, it’s safe to assume these numbers represent rankings. You can normalize them to get an approximate number of unique nodes, but this post was about the distribution of operating systems in the population.
By the way, I didn’t find a report to get OS as a determination factor in versions distribution.
1 Like
It’s a long time ago, when hard drives where very expensive.
I remember it using a lot of base memory, which made it difficult to run many different software titles. It was incompatible with some software - databases. Many just couldn’t run due to not enough base memory. There where constant lockups, risking data corruption.
Yes, I passed through this (I’m in IT since 1989). I mean - why is it important or relevant now?