As I mentioned in another comment - it's bizarre how NetBSD supposedly absolutely dominated and yet there's absolutely zero documentation of that "fact", while there's lots of people talking about using Unix, Windows, and Linux at the time.
> while there's lots of people talking about using Unix, Windows, and Linux at the time.
Not so strange that the talk was all about OS with paid licensing. And I don't see lots of people talking about Linux webservers in the early naughts. Linux was in the news because it was interesting, but the news was about reviving older hardware with free OS. Linux made it into production backends in 2001 at the latest, but no one was writing about it.
And in 2001/2, I'm not sure Amazon was all that notable, still a small Internet company then. Also, I'd find it hard to believe Amazon began on Solaris, rather than Solaris being the first early migration (Sun had even better support than NetBSD, but getting the nines was closely tied to Sun hw). Amazon was initially a garage company. I guess it is possible Bezos had a hand me down Solaris server, and ran without Sun support (the hw was that good, Sun's excellent support was hardly needed), or that it was part of the initial investment, but those servers cost tens of thousands.
I'm really beyond trying to convince anyone that 1) Linux only went everywhere later, 2011/12, not in 2001/6, and that 2) NetBSD, for all intents and purposes, was and ran the entire WWW for a decade or more, ignoring IIS and the small amounts of pay unicies. I saw web audits of OS. No one saved any for future review and nostalgia. NetBSD was an incredibly popular webserver for a long, long time, all through the 90's and into the naughts, losing out to Linux sometime between late 2007 and 2009, by which time it had all but disappeared (or the web got massively bigger).
Believe it or not. I'm not sure what my motive would be for trying to deceive die-hard Penquinistas. If we can't find evidence NetBSD dominated webservers, then find evidence some other OS did, but don't trust Microsoft's BS. IIS was a dog and had some minority marketshare increasing by the late 90's only because no one gets fired for choosing Windows.
> And in 2001/2, I'm not sure Amazon was all that notable, still a small Internet company then.
In 2002? No, Amazon wasn't a small Internet company. It had been around for a decade; it had been publicly traded for half that time. Look at that article I linked - they were spending nearly $100 million a year on infrastructure! Their annual revenue was three quarters of a billion dollars! They were a household name: Time Magazine had already named Jeff Bezos Person of the Year three years prior, in 1999! That CNET article describes them as an "e-commerce giant"...and they felt comfortable betting their tech infrastructure on Linux in 2001, when you insist it would be another decade before it wasn't just for hobbyists.
(And FWIW, Bezos was already quite rich and successful pre-Amazon:
> He first worked at Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he was tasked with building a network for international trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned into the banking industry when he became a product manager at Bankers Trust. He worked there from 1988 to 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical modelling in 1990 and worked there until 1994. Bezos became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president at age 30.
Amazon was also quite well-funded from the jump, with dozens of investors, including hundreds of thousands from his parents alone.
He could have easily afforded a Solaris box or two for his site.)
I understand that you're not trying to convince anyone of anything, because all you're doing is saying "trust me" over and over. Please understand that, likewise, I'm not trying to convince you, because you're clearly completely disinterested in fact-checking your own beliefs. Nor am I a "Penquinista" fighting for Linux's honour or a BSD Hater or something - while I have one machine running Linux, I've got another running Windows; I've run both OpenBSD and FreeBSD at various times; I'm typing this on a Mac now. My motivation in arguing and providing counter-evidence here is just to try to set the record straight for anyone younger who might be reading this, who wasn't around at the time, whose head might be getting filled with misinformation.
> I'd also be willing to bet that Amazon was originally hosted and launched from NetBSD servers
That's funny. In fact, Amazon decided to switch to Linux in 2001 [0], and completed the transition by 2002 [1]. They were moving from Solaris [2].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20010608093419/http://news.cnet....
[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-linux-saved-amaz...
[2] https://twitter.com/DanRose999/status/1347677573900242944
As I mentioned in another comment - it's bizarre how NetBSD supposedly absolutely dominated and yet there's absolutely zero documentation of that "fact", while there's lots of people talking about using Unix, Windows, and Linux at the time.