@rl_dane

the FreeBSD guys are working on a full [KDE installer [ostechnix.com]].

this interested me, so after reading that unofficial article, i looked at the Release Notes for 15.0 & 15.1, but couldn't see any particular mention of it, so i assume they hit roadblocks that have delayed it? Then after some ferreting about i found this brief info; https://wiki.freebsd.org/DesktopIntegration?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryProject%5Cb%29

Desktop-installer is a post-install script to assist in setting up a FreeBSD desktop system using any of the mainstream desktop systems. It automatically installs essential software and configures subsystems such as HAL, CUPS, etc. for typical use.

Can any resident #FreeBSD wizards hereabouts pls comment & advise on this point?

@c64whiz @dwarmstrong

@MsDropbear42 @c64whiz @dwarmstrong

I might recommend [NomadBSD].

I don't know if it's actually still active as a project, but it's a persistent live USB image for #FreeBSD with an xfce DE. It's pretty nice to get your feet wet without actually "losing" your main machine. :D

I know the FreeBSD guys are working on a full [KDE installer]. I'm not sure what the status is, at the moment, but they're definitely making good progress.

#NomadBSD #BSD #RunBSD

@rl_dane wonderful info thx. alas, as someone who will not use anything sans-DE, either #NetBSD or #FreeBSD [those others are even less suitable for my limited capabilities] would pose significant challenges for me... writing as someone longterm in ArchLinux KDE Plasma & KDELinux who enjoys all her bells & whistles! @c64whiz @dwarmstrong

Input on *BSD? I need to start investigating more seriously.

#FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #BSD

@3DirkJS @astra_underscore

Interesting! I wonder if @evgandr would have any pointers on that.

My only other experience running #FreeBSD on a #laptop was an X200. Suspend/resume worked fine, it was just really slow (around 30 seconds)

@rl_dane @astra_underscore how is suspend and resume working for #FreeBSD ?

@as400 @astra_underscore

It's a bit clunky, but I found a script to handle it:

https://github.com/dr3mro/battery_ctrl

source:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/how-to-set-battery-charging-thresholds-on-laptop.79807/page-3

It seems to keep the setting after a reboot, as well. Even after a cold boot, IIRC.

#FreeBSD #BSD #RunBSD #Battery #ChargeThreshold #ChargeThresholds #threshold #thresholds

@astra_underscore

I've got #FreeBSD running on a Thinkpad x260, #OpenBSD on a x200, and #NetBSD running on a random hand-me-down dell laptop (although S3 suspend and charge thresholds don't work on that particular bit of hardware).

If there's anything I can do to help, just holler!

Thank you, @dch@bsd.network

One of the peculiarities of littleFedi is that it was developed and tested first on the BSDs, then on illumos, and only later on Linux.

The first public instance, my own @stefano@rpi0w.stefanomarinelli.it account, runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W with NetBSD.

I don’t think many social platforms have started out on NetBSD in recent years.

#NetBSD #FreeBSD #littleFedi #Fediverse

Thomas Adam boosted

Stefano Marinelli » 🌐 2026-10-01
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe

I want to publicly thank @dch
The FreeBSD port of littleFedi was already ready at release time, and it’s really well done.

One of the peculiarities of littleFedi is that it was developed and tested first on the BSDs, then on illumos, and only later on Linux.

The first public instance, my own @stefano@rpi0w.stefanomarinelli.it account, runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W with NetBSD.

I don’t think many social platforms have started out on NetBSD in recent years.

#ThankYou #RunBSD #NetBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #OwnYourData #Fediverse #littleFedi

@lanodan @techokami

Just curious, since #OpenBSD uses vmm, #NetBSD uses nvmm, and the kernel module for #FreeBSD's #bhyve is also "vmm," does that mean they share source?

Or is vmm just the generic term?

Answer, thanks to Bryan Steele: it's just the generic term ("Virtual Machine Monitor"); they're not related.

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/117364953454550116

This should be read by everyone participating in the #FreeBSD LLM policy working group.

I want to publicly thank @dch
The FreeBSD port of littleFedi was already ready at release time, and it’s really well done.

One of the peculiarities of littleFedi is that it was developed and tested first on the BSDs, then on illumos, and only later on Linux.

The first public instance, my own @stefano@rpi0w.stefanomarinelli.it account, runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W with NetBSD.

I don’t think many social platforms have started out on NetBSD in recent years.

#ThankYou #RunBSD #NetBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #OwnYourData #Fediverse #littleFedi

TIL that wpa_gui is also available on #FreeBSD

#BSD #RunBSD #unix #WM

Just #FYI to my #FreeBSD peeps, I've updated my [cpugov] script to try to show cpu governor (power profile) status in FreeBSD (read-only).

P.S., it now handles #NetBSD as well. It doesn't do a whole lot more than just sysctl machdep.cpu for now, but it also tries to show the latest syslog messages from powerd as well as warn you if the powerd acadapter script isn't set up to change clock speed when the power state changes (which it doesn't by default).
If anyone has any info on how to access the actual CPU governor (and not just the clock speed) in NetBSD, let me know. ;)

Just FYI, if you're missing #ffplay (part of #ffmpeg) on #FreeBSD, you need to install it form ports, rather than the package:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ffplay-not-installed-with-ffmpeg-does-it-require-sdl.72742/#post-466131

As many of you know, I've been getting back into running BSD after 20 or so years away from it. I'm wanting to get NetBSD running, mainly because of the no-AI policy, but I've been struggling and its frustrated me a bit. Well, to be honest, quite a lot. To get BSD running on my desktop, laptop, and small server, and so I can move away form Linux, I'm going to go ahead and get FreeBSD up and running on my hardware. I know that they have a questionable AI policy but this will get me over to BSD and then I can move from there. Plus, FreeBSD has some really, really good documentation to get me started.

#freebsd #netbsd #bsd #noAI

@joel @chadmccullough

This normie had a BSD workstation in 2006! But that was thanks to PC-BSD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueOS

I've never tried a "straight" BSD.

Hoping someone comes up with a PC-BSD-style normie-friendly version of NetBSD (preferably Xfce)

#BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #PCBSD

#omarchy #wealth

I wouldn't usually get political here, but I think it's sickening how a madman has garnered millions of pounds when there's plenty of other institutional open source projects which we rely on every day who''ll never get to this level of monetary support.

I do try in my own way to support the projects I love where I can -- #freebsd, #openbsd, #gameoftrees, etc., all of which I've put some level of money behind.

Don't neglect the power of this -- and don't listen to the hype around some fascist's projects building up millions of pounds.

Your individual support means more than you could know.

I absolutely love #gameoftrees, for example, and I know my paid for VM goes a long way to supporting that project. See? You can make a difference and not even realise it. :)

There's a subtle kind of pleasure in shutting down a VM on a FreeBSD host. You suddenly see the RAM becoming available again on the host, and then, little by little, being "taken over" by the ZFS ARC cache.

I don't know, it sounds like such a trivial thing, but I find it fascinating.

#FreeBSD #ZFS

Holy moly, #GNU sed was immensely faster than #FreeBSD's #sed with the exact same command.

The BSD sed was taking minutes and not finishing at all, only writing about 64KiB of the file per second.

GNU sed finished the entire 34MiB file in a few seconds.

Weird.

rld@Intrepid:tmp$ cat access_log* |sed 's/^.*"\([^"][^"]*\)"$/\1/' >agents.txt
^C
rld@Intrepid:tmp$ cat access_log* |gsed -E 's/^.*"([^"]+)"$/\1/' >agents.txt
rld@Intrepid:tmp$ 
``

Not sure why, but #mpv on #FreeBSD is super stuttery now and doesn't want to play video.

Not sure what happened.

rld@Intrepid:~$ uname -srm
FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE-p2 amd64
rld@Intrepid:~$ pkg info |grep mpv
mpv-0.41.0_1,1                 Free and open-source general-purpose video player

Tried reinstalling it and all its dependencies, but it's still doing it.

Maybe I need to employ my old adage, the very sagest advice from a hypothetical #Canadian:
"When in doot, reboot!"

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Please tip your waitstaff. 😄

Update: Nah, rebooting didn't help. it's still twitchy, basically just going back and forth between the first two frames of the video while playing audio, and showing somewhat twitchy UI. Strange.

Update 2: Upgrading to FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE-p3 (and doing a pkg upgrade) didn't help, either.

I don't know if they're helpful, but here are my mpv error messages:

   1 rld@Intrepid:Videos$ mpv where_did_bytes_come_from_computerphile.mp4 
   1 ● Video  --vid=1               (h264 1920x1080 25 fps) [default]
   1 ● Audio  --aid=1  --alang=eng  (aac 2ch 44100 Hz 126 kbps) [default]
   1 [ffmpeg/video] h264: Device does not support the VK_KHR_video_decode_queue extension!
   1 [ffmpeg/video] h264: no frame!
   1 Cannot load libcuda.so.1
   1 [ffmpeg/video] h264: Device does not support the VK_KHR_video_decode_queue extension!
   1 [ffmpeg/video] h264: Failed setup for format vulkan: hwaccel initialisation returned error.
   1 [ffmpeg/video] h264: no frame!
   1 [ffmpeg] CUDA: Cannot load libcuda.so.1
   1 [ffmpeg] CUDA: Could not dynamically load CUDA
   1 Failed to open VDPAU backend Shared object "libvdpau_nvidia.so" not found, required by "mpv"
   1 AO: [oss] 44100Hz stereo 2ch float
   1 VO: [gpu-next] 1920x1080 yuv420p
  32 [vo/gpu-next/libplacebo] vkQueueSubmit2: VK_ERROR_UNKNOWN (../src/vulkan/command.c:533)
   1 AV: 00:00:01 / 00:11:30 (0%) A-V:  0.000
   1 Exiting... (Quit)

Update 3: I got videos to play again using --vo=wlshm 🤷‍♂️

GRAND work from @spmzt https://labs.ripe.net/author/pouria/closing-the-ipv6-first-packet-gap-with-grand/ #FreeBSD #IPv6

Hey #FreeBSD peeps,

Anyone have any tips getting #VimClassic to compile?

/usr/local/bin/ld: objects/os_unix.o: in function `mch_total_mem':
/home/rld/software/vim-classic-v8.3.0/src/os_unix.c:575:(.text+0x1111): undefined reference to `sysinfo'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
link.sh: Linking failed
*** [vim] Error code 1

make: stopped making "first" in /home/rld/software/vim-classic-v8.3.0/src
make: 1 error

make: stopped making "first" in /home/rld/software/vim-classic-v8.3.0/src
rld@Intrepid:src$ echo $?
2

Here are the commands I'm using (courtesy of a helpful person on the NetBSD matrix room, which did help me compile it on that os):

make distclean

cd src

./configure --with-features=huge --disable-darwin --disable-netbeans --enable-terminal --disable-rightleft --disable-arabic --disable-gtktest --disable-icon-cache-update --enable-multibyte --with-luajit --enable-fontset=no --enable-pythoninterp=dynamic --enable-pythoninterp=dynamic --enable-python3interp=dynamic --enable-perlinterp=dynamic --enable-mzschemeinterp=no --enable-luainterp=dynamic --enable-cscope --enable-rubyinterp=dynamic --enable-autoservername --disable-acl --disable-canberra --disable-desktop-database-update --disable-gtktest --disable-smack --disable-selinux --disable-xattr --enable-gpm=no --enable-motif-check=no --enable-gtk3-check=no --enable-gnome-check=no --enable-gtk2-check=no --without-x --enable-gui=no --enable-xim=no --disable-xsmp-interact --disable-xsmp --with-local-dir=~/bin/lib --with-python3-stable-abi=3.14 --with-python3-command=python3.14

autoreconf

make -j 4

Omar Polo (op@) has announced the release of #OpenSMTPD 7.9.0p0 -portable. ​

Release notes: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=178933407248507&w=2

https://github.com/OpenSMTPD/OpenSMTPD/releases/tag/7.9.0p0

#FreeBSD #Linux

EDIT: the recording is available here: https://exquisite.tube/w/nQbc54t4G7YGaqiryZ7mg1

On 10 March 2021, I had only just fallen asleep when my phone started buzzing. Then another notification, and another. In a matter of minutes, 142 of my servers went up in the clouds. And not the cloud-computing kind.

Most of them were physically going up in a column of smoke in Strasbourg.

My wife looked at me and asked if I wanted a coffee. I nodded. It was going to be a very long day.

At EuroBSDCon 2026, I won't be giving a theoretical lecture on high availability. Instead, I’m going to tell the raw story of that night: the emergency recovery, the architectural choices that actually saved us, and the ones that crumbled under pressure (because we rarely talk about what fails).

Most of all, I’ll explain why that night changed my perspective, and why I’ve come to see BSD systems not just as operating systems, but as essential, practical tools for building simpler, more resilient infrastructure.

The official schedule is now live. If you want to hear a real-world post-mortem, join me on Saturday, 12 Sept at 11:15 (Room D.0.02).

EuroBSDCon Full schedule: https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/schedule/
See you there! ☕️

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonFlyBSD #RunBSD #EuroBSDCon #SysAdmin #SelfHosted #IT #EuroBSDCon2026 #BSDCon

@rl_dane

I do not use it in shell script, and the lack of it in the #Debian Almquist Shells obviously inhibits its spread on several operating systems; but in compiled languages rather than interpreted ones: yes, people use it all of the time. And our compilers nowadays nag us when we don't put in the [[clang:yes, I bloody know it's falling through]]; markers in our code.

The Bournist shell syntax pretty obviously has its roots in trying to provide something that the C shell had been providing since the late 1970s.

An amusing thing here is that when I was working on that dash patch I accidentally implemented the ;| behaviour by mistake, initially. It's actually simpler to implement. But I was aiming merely to bring Xu's dash to parity with the #NetBSD and #FreeBSD Almquist shells, rather than add a feature that they don't have, so I didn't keep the mistake. (-:

@mirabilos
#Unix #UnixShells #AlmquistShell

@rl_dane

The #NetBSD #AlmquistShell has supported ;& for years. I was just reading the CVS changelog to see when it was added to its manual, which was back in 2017.

It definitely works.

The #FreeBSD Almquist Shell has supported ;& for years. I actually have a 2017 version of that.

It definitely works, too.

Neither the Xu Debian Almquist Shell nor the #Debian Debian Almquist Shell (Herbert Xu is maintaining the two in parallel for some reason, and they are different.) support ;& .

Alt...

A terminal session in mostly white on black. At the coloured Z shell prompt, uname shows that the system is NetBSD, and the NetBSD Almquist shell and the Debian Almquist shell are run with a small case statement that uses ";&". The NetBSD Almquist shell can be seen working, and the Debian Almquist shell failing.

Alt...

A terminal session in mostly white on black. At the coloured Z shell prompt, uname shows that the system is FreeBSD, and the FreeBSD Almquist shell and the Debian Almquist shell are run with a small case statement that uses ";&". The FreeBSD Almquist shell can be seen working, and the Debian Almquist shell failing.

@JdeBP

Maybe you learned #VHDL in the interim.  (-:

Uh, NO, do you see me staring far off into the distance and drooling? 😂

By the way, you made me re-visit the doco for case.  It should be ;& (just the one semi-colon) to fall through in all sh-conforming shells, because that was standardized back in 2024.  #NetBSD and #FreeBSD knew it was coming in 2017 and adjusted their Almquist shells.

And I realized that I've been writing for a highest common factor that is actually too low, because the #FreeBSD manual for sh(1) is wrong.  They kept the shell conformant, but didn't keep the doco in synch.

Huh, I tried sh, ksh, mksh, and bash with ;;, ;&, ;;&, and ;| on NetBSD, and the only ones that worked were bash and ksh.

(Ok, I see how I miscommunicated here. I meant the only ones where ;;& or ;| worked, not ;&)

On this Devuan box, bash accepts ;;, ;&, and ;;& just as the manpage states (short-cut, accept all after first accpetance, evalute all, respectively)
mksh works just like bash, but also accepts ;| as equivalent to bash's ;;& (which it also accepts)
Dash's sh (debian almquist) only accepts ;;, and gives an execution-stopping syntax error with all of the other forms.

On a freebsd server I tried, ksh (ksh93) only accepts ;; and ;&. sh acts the same. Tried an OpenBSD server and got the same result.

Here's the test script:

echo
echo 'trying ;;'
case a in a) echo its a;; b) echo its b;; *) echo its something;; esac
echo
echo 'trying ;&'
case a in a) echo its a;& b) echo its b;& *) echo its something;& esac
echo
echo 'trying ;;&'
case a in a) echo its a;;& b) echo its b;;& *) echo its something;;& esac
echo
echo 'trying ;|'
case a in a) echo its a;| b) echo its b;| *) echo its something;| esac

@rl_dane

Maybe you learned #VHDL in the interim. (-:

By the way, you made me re-visit the doco for case. It should be ;& (just the one semi-colon) to fall through in all sh-conforming shells, because that was standardized back in 2024. #NetBSD and #FreeBSD knew it was coming in 2017 and adjusted their Almquist shells.

And I realized that I've been writing for a highest common factor that is actually too low, because the #FreeBSD manual for sh(1) is wrong. They kept the shell conformant, but didn't keep the doco in synch.

#AlmquistShell

This is pretty funny, apparently my announcement of the 14.5-R torrents being available made some people aware that I also have 15.1-R torrents as well. Right now my most active release is 15.1-R, with no activity on 14.5-R (there have been a few uploads that have happened in the last half day or so).

#FreeBSD

The FreeBSD 14.5-R magnet links are now published.

As usual, DHT can take some time to propagate, so give it time.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents

#FreeBSD

The Linux mainline kernel itself contains AI code now. It's officially allowed as long as it's disclosed as such. Thus, you will have to avoid literally all servers running on Linux.

https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html

https://www.neowin.net/news/linus-torvalds-declares-massive-ai-fueled-code-surges-as-the-new-normal-for-linux/

NetBSD has very strict rules regarding AI-generated code. But it doesn't rule AI-generated code out out of principle because it's AI-generated; it only wants to be safe that nothing that's actually GPL-licensed is slipped in. So, if you're an 100%, ultra-hardcode anti-AI extremist, avoid what few servers run on NetBSD.

https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

OpenBSD contains AI-generated code, too. And it has no official stance regarding it. So servers running on OpenBSD are taboo, too.

https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/

FreeBSD has no stance on AI whatsoever that I could find. However, apparently, the FreeBSD community loves to integrate Claude Code into their systems for automation purposes:

https://aumont.fr/posts/claude-code-freebsd/

https://discoverbsd.com/p/8a7660c31b

But you'll also have to look at the userland, the Web server, the database driver etc.

MariaDB allows AI code. You can safely assume that all MySQL databases on Web servers out there are actually powered by MariaDB.

https://mariadb.org/governance/governance-ai-policy/

Oracle MySQL can integrate AI, so it's safe to assume it contains AI-generated code.

https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/announcing-mysql-ai

PostgreSQL probably allows AI code, too. There are even tools for it.

https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

SQLite is very popular amongst AI users while not having any rules on AI-generated code. Assume it to be tainted.

This leaves you with only one choice: Self-hosting a personal, single-user snac2 server because snac2 doesn't need any database whatsoever. In fact, snac2 is staunchly against AI. And it runs on NetBSD.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

But then there's the Web server. Apache may allow AI-generated code if it has been reviewed and made sure that it does not contain anything that's incompatible with the Apache-2.0 license.

https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html

nginx welcomes AI and advertises itself as ready for AI, and it takes no anti-AI-code stance. It's most likely already tainted.

https://www.f5.com/de_de/products/nginx.

This basically leaves you with no Web server guaranteed to be 100% free from AI-generated code to run snac2 on. But that doesn't matter because it's impossible to build a Web server devoid of any AI code to install snac2 on.

By the way: Mastodon itself explicitly allows AI code if it's disclosed as such, and if its contributor understands it.

https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md

In other words, next to all Mastodon servers are running

• AI-generated Mastodon code
• on an AI-generated Web server
• with an AI-generated database driver
• on an AI-generated operating system kernel

More #NetBSD thoughts:

I'm an #i3wm / #sway or #KDE #Plasma guy. I tried #OpenBSD's default wm for about a minute, but it was just too jarring for me. I also used #cwm for a while, and it's actually nicely configurable, but I eventually reverted to i3 on OpenBSD. I haven't tried Sway yet, but #Wayland's supposedly working in "Fish Linux" now. ;)

But #ctwm? Look, it's pretty ancient, and it's not a totally perfect fit for my worfklow, but I'm actually kinda diggin' it!

It's also probably the most attractive default GUI of any of the BSDs, considering that obsd gives you a pretty loud bright red or bright blue titlebar motif-looking thing (not knocking motif, just the primary color choice), and #FreeBSD gives you (checks notes) no GUI by default. XD

ctwm isn't quite as flexible as i3/sway, but it's just configurable enough to keep me coming back and tinkering away at it. The way the warpring function (alt+tab, in other words) works is pretty obtuse (only moving forward or backward in the window list, never re-ordering based on recency), but once I learned how to exclude windows (X11 classes or window titles) from the warpring, it became a ton more usable.

I also figured out how to enable active titlebar highlight (it drives me nuts when that's disabled or very subtle, how do you even not understand that basic tenet of usability?) and even how to assign an xpm image to the titlebar so it looks pretty.

Fun stuff!

I should post another screenshot. ;)

@da_667 @cR0w

I'm not going to pretend that running BSD is a cakewalk, but particularly for #FreeBSD, there are lots of really helpful folks on the #fediverse.

Also, the FreeBSD handbook is amazingly good.

--Sent from my nearly ten year old hand-me-down inspiron running #NetBSD ;)

RE: https://chaos.social/@txt_file/117173096944928199

So, just over a week till the release. I'll be generating magnet links again for this release.

#FreeBSD

I run gkrellm everywhere. Even on closed Source operating systems. The dashboard is designed in such a way that I can just glance and know if something is wrong, if some process pulls way too much, and then I get in with htop to granularly see what's going on

@rl_dane

#gkrellm #Linux #BSD #freeBSD #OpenSource #win64 #dashboard

Gladius, that previously crashed on Ghostbsd, now works perfectly with Vulkan that works correctly.

#bsd #ghostbsd #freebsd #pcgaming #w40k #gladius #videogame #videogames

Alt...

Gladius running on GhostBSD with the Linux native port.

Alt...

Gladius running on GhostBSD with the Linux native port.

Alt...

Gladius running on GhostBSD with the Linux native port.

Alt...

Gladius running on GhostBSD with the Linux native port.

@rl_dane The issue I have with #Debian's included yt-dlp is it's almost always out of date. I just looked on my #FreeBSD build server and it's in Ports under www/yt-dlp.

I'll have to check the version numbers when I have more time but already I am thinking that using FreeBSD is a better option here.

#youtube

The constant arms race between #google and #yt-dlp is amusing to watch, in a tragic sense.

Came very close to running the somewhat scary "curl ${some_url} |sh" install "procedure" for #deno on my #devuan box until I saw that yt-dlp had been updated only yesterday.

I don't know why #debian (upstream) doesn't package Deno like #FreeBSD does.

Tried two games with the Linux port under Ghostbsd.

- Gladius: relics of war, caused a crash of the entire session and I got kicked to the login manager...
Great.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/489630/Warhammer_40000_Gladius__Relics_of_War/

#bsd #freebsd #ghostbsd #pcgaming

#Unix #Sreenshot #Xorg #pfetch #FunNixExperience

@rl_dane Doing well over here. Lots of time spent with #FreeBSD as of late. Just installed 15.1 on a workstation in my #homelab tonight. 😎

How was your time offline?

#POLL Results:

44 people are in deep denial about their existential dread, and should consult a counselor and read #Kierkegaard immediately 😁
139 people like teh pretty tings, and can't be bothered
188 people have started down the path towards enlightment
354 people are cool_kids
92 people are very_cool_kids
55 people laugh at your inadequate security model
27 people can run a server on a bit of bailing wire and a microcontroller from 1987 — fear them.
26 people are keeping Gassée's dream alive, and are plenny cool in my book
4 people are totally cool, and totally in a class by themselves
and 21 people kinda scare me, but I'd like to know more. 🤣

#humor #humour #houmor #houmour

#Windows #MacOS #Linux #CommandLine #BSD #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #Haiku #HaikuOS #BeOS #Amiga #Workbench #AROS #AmigaOS #Plan9 #9Front #TempleOS

P.S., wherever you find yourself, you're awesome. This is all for fun.

https://codeberg.org/thomasadam/cow

@DianeBruce

Ouch, that's an expensive loss these days!

#FreeBSD #HamRadio

Bah lost another WD 1TB SSD SATA drive. Fortunately in a ZFS mirror. Just my old dev. box now the hamradio box.

#FreeBSD #HamRadio

Huh, looks like my paranoia pays off . I'm ignoring the subway at near 6 years, since an obstacles to enter it became more and more crazier. First, /they/ installed a single metal detector frame and a luggage x-ray scanner in a separate room, to send some "suspicious" passengers to check. Then, to the sake of "SeCuRiTy" the whole entrance to subway became fenced off with a lot of metal detector frames, so it is became impossible to enter the subway without being scanned for metal.

At this point, when I entered one specific subway entrance near my home, I was always sent to this room with x-ray luggage scanner to check my backpack with a meal for dinner every fucking day. The "guards" obviously ignored the fact that they scanned me each fucking day and found nothing every fucking time. Possibly, they were using some outdated police manual from USSR-era which has some shit like "people with beards and not completely white skin are definitely terrorists", huh

The last straw was the new inner rule for "subway guards" prohibiting the civil guns and ammo to be in the luggage of passengers. It was violating the laws, which were allowing the transportation of civil guns in the cover with all the necessary license documents. At this point I decided to ignore the subway transportation, because here (not in USA, lmao ) the new guns-restricting laws and rules usually show that something bad will happen after it (e.g. first prohibit the civil guns, then start the repressions).

And recently I was really NEED to use a subway — there simply were no another way to arrive at necessary point at the necessary time with existing money. Looks like the things worsened A LOT after these 6 years. First, I was ordered to put all electronic devices, even the smartphone to the x-ray scanner. Then, I was ordered to turn on all my electronic devices to show that it is a real electronic device and not a some kind of bomb (at least it was justified this way).

/They/ watched that smartphone screen is lights on and, thankfully, didn't order to unlock it. But the laptop causes a much more attention . The screen with BIOS (Libreboot) didn't satisfied /them/, they wanted me to enter the #GELI password and show that OS is booting. Yes, under the ton's of cameras and in presence of two "subway guards". I complied, because in the good case I was just driven out of the subway and will be too late for the important meeting; and in bad case the police were involved . Then, /they/ started asking questions: isn't this some kind of "military tech" (#Thinkpad X220, LMAO), WTF is #FreeBSD is booting, etc.

Ofc, I changed GELI password as soon as I arrived at home with some simple commands:

```
doas geli setkey -j ~/old_passphrase.txt -J ~/new_passphrase.txt /dev/adaXpY
# Check that key №0 was changed (keys should be equal to 0x01)
doas geli dump adaXpY | grep keys
keys: 0x01
rm -vf ~/old_passphrase.txt ~/new_passphrase.txt
```

So, looks like my paranoia with all these checks before entering the subway were right. If I don't want all these humiliating checks, then better to continue ignoring this public transportation thing at all. Hope, one day I'll buy a car or a motorcycle and will not be bothered with all this craziness at all

#surveillance #subway

With Apple phasing out AFP in macOS 27 and Time Capsules officially reaching end-of-life, it's time to move network backups to proper SMB.

If you run a FreeBSD server, you can build a fast, rock-solid, and secure Time Machine target powered by ZFS and Samba - neatly isolated inside a FreeBSD jail using Bastille.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2026/01/28/time-machine-freebsd-jail/

Keep your macOS backups running smoothly via SMBv3 (with full vfs_fruit support) and full dataset quota control on ZFS!

#FreeBSD #macOS #TimeMachine #ZFS #BastilleBSD #Samba #SysAdmin #Backup #OwnYourData #SelfHosted #BSD #RunBSD #OwnYourData

#FreeBSD #RiverWM

Alt...

A screenshot of my Cow ( FVWM for Wayland ) desktop that runs on the River compositor. The wallpaper shows a green meadow with flowers and a girl lying down staring at the sky. In the background are snow peaked mountains. There is a terminal window open with the Cow menus open and a qutebrowser window that is shaded.

I have a #FreeBSD #VM set up in my #homelab for #Poudriere and #Ports. I've dabbled in the Ports system in the past - it's a useful feature, but there's a lot of work in manually managing builds, especially for n=1 systems. Still, it didn't stop me from wanting to use it.

First impressions with Poudriere? Wow, this makes life so much easier. In the context of #IT #Operations, whoa...this goes well beyond just automating builds in dedicated jails, Poudriere now becomes the enterprise package management repo system.

Wicked sick.

#tech #RunBSD

https://codeberg.org/thomasadam/cow

#Wayland #fvwm #CoW #RiverWM #FreeBSD

@rl_dane I'd say the desktop experience on #FreeBSD has come a long way since I first started with version 6.0.

Oh, the sheer pain of hand-configuring the xfree86 and later xorg.conf files, just to get the gray screen with X cursor!

It wasn't even a masochistic type of pain, either.

I'd say it's closer to the Debian experience from 2006. 🤣

Haven't had the need to try wifi (yet).

@peteorrall

The #FreeBSD experience is a lot like the Linux experience... in 1999. ;)

So, you don't get any kind of a GUI (or even Wifi) working out-of-the-box, but the official handbook is a dream to work with, and they take you through the steps of getting it working quite easily.

The major version upgrade (14.x->15.0) was a non-starter, but they make it stupid easy to roll back to a previous version basically instantaneously.

The package system has tons and tons of packages, such that I never really missed things like flatpak. The only problem is that many packages are needing maintainers, but that never gave me any major problems. (I should really volunteer but... skill issue, maybe? ;)

As always, the answer to the fear of losing time when converting main machine over to a new-to-you OS is to just put it on a side machine and enjoy playing with it, and see if it becomes more of a main machine.

Touching the topic of music production, though, I have no idea. I'm not even really familiar with how the sound server works, but I know that pipewire and jack are in the repos.

@rl_dane Coming from #Debian to #FreeBSD as a daily driver what are your thoughts?

I'm not there just yet but I have a new TrueNAS server in place where I can run lab VMs without constraint. I have a FreeBSD VM running there now. Diving into Jails. 😎

@peteorrall

It's been the OS installed on the computer I use the most at home since November, so, yes, mostly.

I have Debian on my work machine and OpenSuSE on my "gaming" SFF desktop.

Also have #OpenBSD on my old X200t, and am just getting started with #NetBSD on a hand-me-down Inspiron.

I love hand-me-down laptops. 😁

#FreeBSD

@rl_dane Is #FreeBSD your daily driver now?

Woot, FINALLY!

rld@Intrepid:~$ uname -a
FreeBSD Intrepid 15.1-RELEASE-p2 FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE-p2 releng/15.1-n283596-aadd58dddcbc GENERIC amd64

No more networking issues, and drm (graphics) didn't work at first, but then sorted itself out.

🤷‍♂️ Mmmmmkay!!! 😄

#FreeBSD #FreeBSD15 #Upgrade

#FreeBSD #Wayland #CoW #pkgbase

When #FreeBSD is so reliable you forget you're not on #Debian*.

rld@Intrepid:handbook$ doas apt install imv
doas (rld@Intrepid) password: 
doas: apt: command not found
rld@Intrepid:handbook$ doas pkg install imv

* UNTIL you try to do a major version upgrade and wifi breaks. 🤣

The key to knowing if a FreeBSD box reboot is needed lies in comparing the installed kernel version with the currently running kernel version. How do you do that?

1 Get the version of the running kernel:
`freebsd-version -r`

2 Get installed FreeBSD kernel version:
`freebsd-version -k`

3 Since 14.4-RELEASE-p7 & 14.4-RELEASE-p8 are different versions, reboot it
`sudo reboot`

More here if you want to do this in automated way with ansible https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/freebsd-determine-if-a-system-reboot-is-necessary/

#unix #freebsd

Alt...

The terminal screenshot showing FreeBSD commands to check kernel versions and reboot the system by running: freebsd-version -r # <---- Get the version and patch level of the running kernel freebsd-version -k # <---- Get installed FreeBSD kernel version by the freebsd-update command sudo reboot # 14.4-RELEASE-p7 & 14.4-RELEASE-p8 are different versions we need to reboot the system

@aaron

In fairness, Debian/kFreeBSD was an on-going project for well over a decade, and there was even a Debian/kNetBSD several years before that. That said, their histories show that talk is cheap for the people suggesting Debian on a BSD kernel yet again.

If you encounter them, throw the cat amongst the pigeons by telling them that not only is Debian/Hurd an active project, unlike the dead Debian on BSD ones, it's also not a Linux kernel; and Samuel Thibault could do with the assistance. (-:

I don't know what M. Thibault's position on LLM-generated code is.

https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD

https://debian.org/ports/hurd/

#Debian #FreeBSD #Hurd #NetBSD #AIslop

https://codeberg.org/thomasadam/cow

#FreeBSD #River #CoW #fvwm

https://codeberg.org/thomasadam/cow

#WindowManager #Linux #OpenBSD #FreeBSD

PS: I have not yet customised the theme it's the out of the box theme.

https://codeberg.org/thomasadam/cow

#CoW #River #Wayland #fvwm #FreeBSD

Alt...

A screenshot of the CoW ( Compositor on Wayland ) desktop showing the Qutebrowser window and the terminal foot with a fastfetch output displaying the wm as River

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

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?

@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/

Welcome back Beastie!

FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE goes on the Thinkpad T480s and my install notes (slightly) updated:

https://www.dwarmstrong.org/freebsd-install/

Onward!

#FreeBSD #RunBSD

Alt...

Output of the 'fastfetch' command displaying system info for a Thinkpad with a fresh install of 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. 😁

Following on from a recent conversation with @rl_dane about running Joy+Horton #vi in one of its three (sic!) 'open' modes on a paper terminal:

I decided to see whether any modern #termcap or #terminfo database actually had any settings anywhere for switching dot matrix printers between near-letter, draft, and letter quality modes.

#Illumos, #OpenBSD, #Debian, and #NetBSD all use the Dickey terminfo.src. #FreeBSD is the only one maintaining a different database. It is still maintaining the old BSD termcap file, in 2026.

Neither of the databases have sdrfq/snlq/snrmq or ZG/ZL/ZK capabilities in any record.

This stuff exists solely as words on a manual page (and reprints of the same in various books) and a single Usenet post by Oliver Okrongli in 1994. It's not even in the O'Reilly termcap+terminfo book.

We should prune such stuff that apparently has never really existed.

#retrocomputing #Unix

@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."

@frobozz

#ZFS is nice. I've had it, with full root-on-ZFS, since PC-BSD. It took me several years to actually realize how nice it was.

If you want something more arcane than #FreeBSD to play with, take a look at #Illumos, in particular its derivatives #OpenSolaris, #OmniOS, #SmartOS, and @ptribble 's #Tribblix.

Illumos has original Joy+Horton #vi (not one of the clones), the SMF, zones, ZFS, and a fair number of System 5isms not in the BSD world (e.g. sar, which @rl_dane was talking about the other day).

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