Livecode server UNIX version (not Linux).

[Richard Gaskin]

Pi Digital wrote:

 > Heres my take (for what its worth). Although Unix is used in 71.6%
 > (source: w3techs.com) of all known websites as of today and Linux only
 > 29.0%, at least we have a distro that works on some server.

That struck me as odd, so I took a moment to see how they derived that 
impressive Unix number (thanks for including the source).

It turns out they're lumping Unix and Linux together under "Unix" - when 
you click "Unix" you get this breakdown:

    Subcategories of Unix

    This diagram shows the percentages of websites using various
    subcategories of Unix.

    How to read the diagram:
    Linux is used by 40.5% of all the websites who use Unix

    Websites who use Unix
    Linux       40.5%
    BSD	        0.5%
    Darwin     less than 0.1%
    HP-UX      less than 0.1%
    Solaris    less than 0.1%
    Minix      less than 0.1%
    Unknown    59.0%

I'd wager most of the 59% using "Unknown" are also Linux.

That would line up well enough with what we see at the Wikipedia page 
for server OS market share:

                               Linux   FreeBSD    Unknown  Windows
    W3Cook         July 2015    96.4%     1.7%       0%      1.9%
    W3Techs        Feb  2015    35.9%   0.95%       30.9%   32.3%
    Security Space  Feb 2014   <79.3%     N/A               >20.7%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Public_servers_on_the_Internet

While Windows has a strong showing in the enterprise for internal 
servers, public-facing servers are by far a Linux story.

This is not only true for most shared and VPS hosting, but public clouds 
as well, with Google, Amazon, and Apple all using Linux to drive their 
infrastructure, and even though Azure is a Win/Linux mix there's a 
surprising amount of Linux going on there (with Ubuntu being the leading 
choice inside containers).

I bring this up not just because I'm a Linux fanboy (though I am and 
make no apologies; I was even worse when I used to be a Mac fanboy <g>), 
but just as a long-winded way to help support your main thesis:

Aside from new architectures like Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi), the most 
commonly-used platforms where LiveCode Serer would be used are well 
supported.

So, as you wrote:

 > Seriously, if anyone was considering doing this, please..., please,
 > reconsider and put your efforts and talent into fixing what we already
 > have. It would be far more beneficial to a much greater community
 > population.

There may be many useful requests in the bug DB worth considering to 
improve the performance, robustness, and feature set of LC Server.

But Heriberto's up for an adventure, one enhancement that would lower 
RAM use and speed things up a bit is this one:

https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14115

Heriberto, if that's interesting to you let me know. I have a workaround 
in place now, and I'll bet there's a way to move that inside the engine 
for a solution that's much simpler than when we discussed it here on 
this list earlier this year.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com