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+title = "FreeBSD on the Desktop won't improvide unless people are using it"
+author = ["Michał Sapka"]
+date = 2023-03-29T22:09:00+02:00
+categories = ["blog"]
+draft = false
+weight = 2038
+abstract = "I have hits from /r/bsd, but almost none of those people are using BSD"
+aliases = ["/bsd/desktop-freebsd-wont-improve-unless-people-are-using-it/", "/2023/desktop-freebsd-wont-improve-unless-people-are-using-it"]
++++
+
+Shamelessly, I posted my previous post, [FreeBSD on a Thinkpad Extreme G2](https://d-s.sh/2023/freebsd-on-thinkpad-x1-extreme-g2/) on [/r/bsd Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/124v5cm/freebsd_on_a_thinkpad_x1_extreme_g2/).
+
+The result, some 24 hours later, is 100 visitors.
+Out of that 100, 57 are using a desktop.
+Out of that 57, only 2 used FreeBSD—2%. No other BSDs are recorded.
+
+People who are into BSD don't use BSD.
+This seems to be a reason for lacking hardware support.
+If no one uses FreeBSD, no one will encounter those problems. If no one encounters them, no one will fix them.
+
+
+## Update 2023-04-14 {#update-2023-04-14}
+
+The article, got quite the round around the internets, gathering some interests from [Reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/126fvkz/desktop_freebsd_wont_improve_unless_people_are/), [Hacker News](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35378367>), Twitter, Discover BSD, or [Vermaden](https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2023/04/03/valuable-news-2023-04-03/).
+With all that interest come quite a few questions and comments.
+The following is an attempt to summarize it all.
+
+
+### People who use FreeBSD don't care about FreeBSD hardware {#people-who-use-freebsd-don-t-care-about-freebsd-hardware}
+
+This makes perfect sense.
+If your FreeBSD installation on X220 works flawlessly, you may not care about anything more modern.
+But there will come a time when you will need to replace the hardware.
+
+{{< img-r "freebsd-beastie.png" >}}
+FreeBSD Beastie
+{{< /img-r >}}
+
+This comment, however, came as a proof that the sample from my blog is invalid.
+This may be the case, but I don't buy it.
+All traffic on the aforementioned post came from Reddit's BSD forum.
+It's the one place where you could expect that people using BSD would hang.
+It may also be that it's quite a random sample - it's small, and people who have yet to become into BSD but are BSD-curious opened my blog post.
+I am in no place to debunk or confirm this.
+I, however, know that many people presenting at FreeBSD conferences do it using Macs or Windows.
+So even if the numbers are dubious, the overall feeling remains sorrowful.
+
+To add to the above: there are also stats for the commented opinion piece.
+Two hundred forty-four people opened it from /r/freebsd.
+Of that, 24 people were using FreeBSD, and just 2 were using OpenBSD.
+
+
+### Your statistics may be invalid as people mask their browser agent. {#your-statistics-may-be-invalid-as-people-mask-their-browser-agent-dot}
+
+This also may be the case.
+Why, then, is the referer not spoofed?
+It's a much more invasive data point than the underlying OS.
+But I'm a simple Firefox user, never used Librewolf.
+
+
+### FreeBSD is a server OS {#freebsd-is-a-server-os}
+
+Yeah, this is the sentiment I've read before jumping aboard.
+My problem with this idea is that each and every FOSS OS is a value in itself.
+The current poster boy,
+Linux, also had huge problems getting to work on various machines.
+In my opinion, it's limiting OS to a single use case is a completely valid point - your use case for FreeBSD is on a server, and this is where it currently shines (or not, depending on your experience).
+Some folks despise allocating any FreeBSD dev time to the desktop as there are many server issues.
+
+But again, I don't see it this way.
+Limiting FreeBSD to the server only is short-lighted.
+Unless you are already powering your servers with BSD, there will always be a question: "Why not Linux. It's what everyone else is doing".
+And Linux got into its current position not by being a great server machine but rather by attracting the interest of some very skillful people.
+And it did it by allowing more and more people to free themselves from Windows on their machines.
+
+I see FreeBSD problems as having two primary causes: the [Unix wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars) of the past and limited resources now.
+If FreeBSD were easier to use on a wide range of end-user machines (which tend to be laptops), the easier it would for people to want to develop it.
+BSDs are now a far second choice.
+Why would someone invest time?
+They may fall in love with the OS, but unless they try it, it will never happen.
+
+
+### I like our small userbase {#i-like-our-small-userbase}
+
+I'm as elitist as the other person. [DWM](https://dwm.suckless.org/) stated that
+
+> "This keeps its userbase small and elitist.
+> No novices asking stupid questions.
+
+I can't find this quote anymore, but the sentiment seems similar.
+However, there are two aspects here.
+
+FreeBSD comes with no graphical interface by default.
+This makes it much closer to minimalist distros than Ubuntu.
+This still allows anyone to feel like a hacker.
+
+The second, however, is that some problems are unsolvable by end-user.
+Writing drivers is EXTREMELY difficult, and, as I've recently learned (thanks, Jeff!), this is especially true when it comes to WiFi drivers, as there is no open implementation.
+This means that any progress requires a trial-and-error process based on reverse engineering.
+No one without deep knowledge of low-level programming will be able to make any progress, and even those few will need people with real hardware for testing.
+
+
+### Hardware support is years behind Linux {#hardware-support-is-years-behind-linux}
+
+Yes, and this is what I was referring to.
+
+
+### Why would anyone use BSD on a desktop? {#why-would-anyone-use-bsd-on-a-desktop}
+
+It's a great system, just needs a lot of work on hardware support :-)
+
+
+### Your post is worthless, and only the comments are interesting {#your-post-is-worthless-and-only-the-comments-are-interesting}
+
+It's more than I anticipated. That post was small and written without any deeper research. But the discussion around it makes me believe that I hit something real.
+
+
+## OpenBSD Amsterdam {#openbsd-amsterdam}
+
+{{< img-r "openbsd-amsterdam.png" >}}
+OpenBSD Amsterdam logo
+{{< /img-r >}}
+
+I had a similar exodus of server providers.
+First, it was Linode, then Vultr.
+Linode became useless when I wanted to try BSD.
+Vultr was great as it provided images of FreeBSD and OpenBSD for its VMs.
+But why stop halfway?
+Vultr doesn't use BSD as the base system.
+While it may not be a big deal, I've recently learned of[ OpenBSD Amsterdam](https://openbsd.amsterdam/)[^fn:1].
+
+OpenBSD Amsterdam is a small company based in (to the surprise of everyone reading this) Amsterdam.
+What's even better is that they serve OpenBSD VMS from OpenBSD hosts via vmm(4) and vmd(8) - a small virtualization driver baked into OpenBSD. Cool.
+
+What's even cooler is that they give a significant part of their earnings to the [OpenBSD Fundation](https://www.openbsdfoundation.org/).
+
+I could not resist, and a day after learning about them, I had already paid for a full year.
+
+
+## Updates {#updates}
+
+2023-12-12: moved info about web stack to a [dedicated article](/bsd/open-bsd-web-stack).
+
+[^fn:1]: : notice the lack of Amazon Web Services.
+    Screw them.
+    They have almost all of the interwebs in their server farm, but they will not have this blog!