https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/pkgbasify

@seuros

Thanks for the work. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for FireWire.

Did you test out dcons? To make sure it still works?

#FreeBSD

Now let me tell you about the 87th commit.

It was about FireWire.

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/e7efe2f059a474f8f8e14393713071761a633e65

Most people think FireWire died when USB became famous. It didnt.

Its still used by professional audio interfaces, DV camcorders, industrial and scientific cameras, and plenty of legacy equipment that continues to do its job every day. Audio equipment don't need upgrades if they are still operating correctly. A firewire cable is superior to a new USB cable.

That where i tested it. The users just kept using old version of MacOS that don't even have updated SSH.

Together with Adrian Chadd, we dusted off the stack, rediscovered how it worked, cleaned it up, and refactored years of accumulated code.

And we didnt stop there.

We also added three new drivers:

• fwcam - Firewire webcams
• fwisound - Apple FireWire audio interfaces.
• fwdv - DV camcorders, including many classic Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC models.

That means #FreeBSD can now talk directly to equipment that many operating systems have quietly abandoned.

Someone in reddit used it to dump 50 tapes of childhood to digital format. I used it to have a zoom call with FreeBSD wifi group. :)

FreeBSD call for testing: PREFSRC route attribute support <https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-net/2026-July/009137.html>

this lets you set the preferred source IP address for outgoing packets via a particular route, overriding the default source selection logic.

it's particularly useful for IPv4-over-IPv6 routing; previously, BSD required assigning an IPv4 /32 to every interface for this to work properly; now, you can simply set the IPv4 loopback address as the preferred source.

it's also useful in situation where the router has multiple IPv6 addresses and you want to select which is used, similar to the "net.inet.icmp.reply_src=lo0" sysctl for IPv4 (but it affects all outgoing connections, not just ICMP errors).

it's also useful for IPv4 when you want to control this per-route rather than globally, especially if you're routing in multiple FIBs.

basically, it's really useful for a lot of situations and i'd love to see it land, so please help test it.

it is compatible with the Linux netlink API and works out of the box with BIRD (krt_prefsrc attribute).

the main patch is this one: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D58294 - either use the 'download raw diff' link, or use 'git arc patch D58294' to apply it to a tree.

you can send feedback directly to Pouria, or just reply to me and i'll forward it.

#freebsd #ipv6 #networking

I have now installed #FreeBSD on
-- a Dell Latitude 5320
-- a T430
-- a Poweredge R540

and it's remarkably easy. I've got Wayland and LibreOfficeworking cheerfully on the laptops. The server took a little more fiddling because of its own weird hardware issues, but I'm setting up jails for all sorts of things. Refreshingly easy. I really missed BSD. Glad to be back.

Many thanks to the FreeBSD community for being absurdly helpful, and @stefano in particular for setting up infrastructure that lets folks be so supportive.

I am not a technical user so this may seem like a silly question, #freebsd friends. I have a computer that has a Broadcom wireless chip. What I’ve read is that in FreeBSD, Broadcom drivers are generally less supported than Intel chipsets. Is this because of anything other than resource allocation? Is there anything specific with Broadcom stuff that makes them more difficult to work with?

Follow up question, is there a driver bounty program that people could contribute to? Allocate some resources to get some better drivers?

When you first started using FreeBSD and like me, you struggled to figure out how to get a desktop installed, this guide from @FreeBSDFoundation is really helpful.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/resource/installing-a-desktop-environment-on-freebsd/

#freebsd

📢 EuroBSDCon2026: The Schedule is Here! 😈⛳️🐡

The schedule is now published!!
You can find it at: https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/schedule/

Grab your tickets 🎟️ at https://tickets.eurobsdcon.org/eurobsdcon/brussels/

For everything else, peek at https://2026.eurobsdcon.org/
More information is added all the time.

EuroBSDCon 2026 in Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪
September 09-13, 2026

#RUNBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #EuroBSDCon #EuroBSDCon2026 #BSD #Conference #Register

Alt...

Cutout of the EuroBSDCon 2026 banner. Comic like drawing. First panel has a butler serving a nice Belgium beer. There are two speech bubbles. 1. ...we find this? 2. Etterbeek, Sir. The second panel has Manneken Pis doing his thing.

@rl_dane

This is the second post where you'd dropped the F bomb....for good reason.

I have so much to say but not sure how to say it but I will do my best. For *years*, I've enjoyed using #Linux both as a hobbyist and professional #sysadmin. The OS is definitely not the one I started with 20+ years ago. Since at least COVID has....well, it's turned into a full blown corporate-controlled high speed sprawling mess. Not necessarily matured just grown exponentially wherever the various powers see fit. For this and other reasons, I am leaning more and more towards #FreeBSD.

Lastly, I will admit there are some #AI niche use cases which do interest me (related to my own hobbies) but shoving it into everything is not a good idea.

@patrick

Man, booting FreeBSD aarch64 as a VM on an M4 is FAST.

#FreeBSD

Just realized that the only device I use regularly that doesn't have significant BSD code in it is my android phone.

Devices I use regularly/interact dirdctly with [Free]BSD on them:
✅ macos
✅ PS5
✅ Personal FreeBSD server

And at work as well.

Which of course entered the cursed thought of porting android over to FreeBSD.

#FreeBSD

So I wanted to share with you this little project of mine. I delved into "retro-necromancy" and reanimated one very old UNIX utility called ile written by Robert Pendleton in 1988. I found it on one of the Walnut Creek source code CDs from 1994.
What it does is simply works like an input line editor (hence ile) for shells and programs that do not support interactive line editing. To put it simply, it adds Emacs-style keybindings like ^A, ^E, ^K, ^U and so on and command history that you can easily navigate.
Of course, these days it's hard to find a shell that doesn't support line editing.
But this little tool can still be usable, for example, with ed. It's nice to have Emacs-style editing in ed.
It can work like shell replacement or just run like a "middleman" between any given program. It respects terminal settings and doesn't get in a way. Keybindings are configurable.
Needless to say, the code from 1988 wouldn't run on any modern system. It was written in K&R style because there was no ANSI C standard yet! And #UNIX was quite a different beast back then.
So I ported it to modern systems, rewrote outdated bits (like sgttyb ioctls and brutal utmp handling).
Currently it builds and runs on #Linux, #OpenBSD, #FreeBSD and #NetBSD. Hopefully without too much bugs.
You can find it on Codeberg:
https://codeberg.org/chesheer/ile

Strange that neither #FreeBSD nor #OpenBSD have jbig2 in their packages. I wasn't able to get it to compile on FreeBSD, either. :/

#jbig2 #ports #packages

# Terminal vt(4) Gruvbox colors 
kern.vt.color.0.rgb="#000000"
kern.vt.color.1.rgb="#cc241d"
kern.vt.color.2.rgb="#98971a"
kern.vt.color.3.rgb="#d79921"
kern.vt.color.4.rgb="#458588"
kern.vt.color.5.rgb="#b16286"
kern.vt.color.6.rgb="#689d6a"
kern.vt.color.7.rgb="#a89984"
kern.vt.color.8.rgb="#928374"
kern.vt.color.9.rgb="#fb4934"
kern.vt.color.10.rgb="#b8bb26"
kern.vt.color.11.rgb="#fabd2f"
kern.vt.color.12.rgb="#83a598"
kern.vt.color.13.rgb="#d3869b"
kern.vt.color.14.rgb="#8ec07c"
kern.vt.color.15.rgb="#ebdbb2"

Wow, #newsboat is actually pretty usable at 1200 #baud! #respect! :D (sent from tootme on my #FreeBSD #thinkpad running at 110 baud 😄) — #microblogging #MicroToot: 137 characters

Another great shout out to @vermaden for this thorough introduction to #FreeBSD, especially if one is coming from #Linux. It may be several years old but much of the info is still relevant today.

The FreeBSD Handbook is great but the additional details and context for the topics covered are where this document really shines.

This needs to be required reading for anyone curious about the OS.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/quare-freebsd/

Hmm, since I have a ssh based ggate client, I realized I could put that code into the kernel. It's like iSCSI, but over ssh.

#FreeBSD

https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/timetable/timetable-Migrating-from-VMWare.html

https://www.theregister.com/virtualization/2026/06/17/tesco-is-sprinting-to-quit-vmware-and-broadcom-despite-rapid-migration-risks/5256133

*whistles innocently*

#FreeBSD #BSDCan #VMWare

@bpl

Hopefully my #FreeBSD numbers for thus far in 2026 should redeem me 😁 —

rld@Intrepid:~$ uname -srm
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p12 amd64
rld@Intrepid:~$ qalc $(wc -l < powertrack.txt) minutes
23195 minutes = 16 d + 2 h + 35 min
rld@Intrepid:~$ 

...well, a little bit, at least. 😁

@sotolf @paul @xarvos @ay

I have to preface this to say that it's not my main OS, so I have limited time with it. For example here's my total usage per OS per year:

2023:
Linux: 49 d, 14 h, 57 min

2024:
Linux: 191 d, 18 h, 55 min
OpenBSD: 4 d, 7 h, 59 min

2025:
Linux: 175 d, 1 h, 41 min
FreeBSD: 23 d, 17 h, 54 min
OpenBSD: 3 d, 8 h, 19 min

(actually most of the time labeled "FreeBSD" for 2025 was actually Linux. I only converted that one box to #FreeBSD in November)

That said, notwithstanding how "primitive" #OpenBSD's FFS is, I have yet to lose any data with it, even taking into account a basically ornamental battery 😆 and occasional kernel crashes from me mucking about with buggy sysctls.

All that to say, I wouldn't doubt that ext4 is actually more robust than btrfs, even though it's more "basic."

LOL NOPE. There was a ticksy '^M' / '\r' hiding in the text, Precious!!! Tricksy carriage return, we hates them, Precious!!!

P.S. using the "l" command could have saved me a few minutes of consternation 😅 —

rld@prometheus:~$ echo -e 'sneaky\rhello there'
hello there
rld@prometheus:~$ echo -e 'sneaky\rhello there' |snarfi
rld@prometheus:~$ ed
P
*H
*r !snarfo
19
*,n
hello thereaky
*,p
hello there
*,l
sneaky\rhello there
*

GUYS,

I think I just found a bug in #FreeBSD's #ed(1):

*,n
1	a 1-bit bi-level (#425477
2	 and 
3	#9fabcd
*1
a 1-bit bi-level (#425477
*j
*p
 and it bi-level (#425477
*WHAT??!?
?
unexpected command suffix
*,n
 and    a 1-bit bi-level (#425477
2	#9fabcd
*
*,p
 and it bi-level (#425477
#9fabcd
*u
*,n
1	a 1-bit bi-level (#425477
2	 and 
3	#9fabcd
*,p
a 1-bit bi-level (#425477
 and 
#9fabcd
*

@darkuncle @gumnos

I think it's in the 'sysstat' package in #Debian, but I don't see it in #FreeBSD ports/pkg.

rld@Intrepid:~$ pkg search -i sysstat
libsysstat-0.4.6               Library used to query system info and statistics
libsysstat-qt6-1.1.0_3         Library used to query system info and statistics ported to qt6
xsysstats-1.51_6               System information display tool
rld@Intrepid:~$ 

What’s stopping you from building a nice little home lab running multiple VMs, a personal DNS resolver with Ad blockers, a ZFS based NAS and firewall with #Linux or #FreeBSD? 🤔

@vermaden

It's 2026, and we still don't know what the ELI in GELI stands for 😂

I've emailed the author. He was very cordial, but kept his cards close to his chest. 😄

cc: @RadioAzureus

#FreeBSD #GELI

👿 FreeBSD 15.1 Released With Updated WiFi Drivers, Better C23 Support & Other Improvements https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-15.1-Released

#freebsd #bsd #unix #opensource

Sorry, I got distracted, but I've now posted the FreeBSD 15.1-R magnet links at their usual place:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents

I'm seeding them all now, and as usual DHT will take a while to find the new torrents.

#FreeBSD

Step 1: Open terminal
Step 2: Type `alias nano='vim -c "smile"'`
Step 3: Enjoy this whenever someone type `nano`!

#SysAdmin #Linux #FreeBSD

Alt...

This screenshot shows green ASCII art of the Vim ester eggs on a dark retro terminal screen, with the "Press ENTER or type command to continue" prompt displayed at the bottom when you type nano at the cli via bash alias: alias nano='vim -c "smile"'