openpgp-card-tools (oct) is now officially in the FreeBSD ports tree 🙂 YAY!! :-)

https://www.freshports.org/security/openpgp-card-tools/

@hko #freebsd #ports #unix #gpg #cryptography

Any #FreeBSD folks working on OCI things:

Are there any plans for a bhyve-based runtime with a model similar to Apple's container tool or Kata Containers? I think the virtfs support is now in FreeBSD (sadly, not yet virtio-fs, but hopefully soon?). I'd love to have bhyve as an alternative to jails for container isolation.

ansible-jailexec 2.0.4 is out 🎉

jailexec is an Ansible connection plugin that runs tasks in FreeBSD jails via jexec on the jail host, no sshd inside the jails needed.

Bugfix: with delegate_to between jails, tasks silently ran in the original host's jail, because Ansible keeps inventory_hostname pointing at the original host and jailexec used it as the jail name.

If you delegate between jails, upgrade and check what earlier runs changed.

Thanks to the user who reported it privately with a perfect reproducer!

https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/releases/tag/v2.0.4

#Ansible #FreeBSD #Jails

I built a site that shows which known CVEs affect the FreeBSD Ports, and whether there is already a fix and a VuXML entry (the database behind pkg audit):

https://portstatus.bsdproject.de

Every hour it matches NVD and CNA data against the packages and VuXML, and shows whether a fix has reached the quarterly branch.

“Unaddressed” does not mean exploitable, just worth a second look.

Private project, not an official FreeBSD service.

#FreeBSD #infosec #CVE

New blog post in my series about using the HumanWare BrailleNote Apex with #FreeBSD! This time, I explore USB communication in USB Client mode.

https://alfonsosiciliano.gitlab.io/posts/2026-10-26-freebsd-usb-apex.html

#FreeBSD #Accessibility #A11y #UNIX #OpenSource #Braille #DeviceDrivers #AssistiveTechnology

Please don't scroll past. This is important.

I am being pressured by FreeBSD's reddit moderation team to censor the Omarchy #content_review or to remove it completely. They have began a harrasment campaign with the goal of removing me from this world.

the review: https://merveilles.town/@prahou/117501303459299869

The issue at hand is that a picture of a partial swastika appears in close proximity to the word FreeBSD, this they perceive as an attack on the FreeBSD project - if you've seen a newspaper before, you might understand the principle of two separate unrelated articles appearing next to each other. You might also understand that I am reporting on common associations with the Topic of the review. These are not my inventions, and I am not calling anyone anything. I am reporting on the news. Nevertheless, as much as I am a journalist, I am an artistè, and if my audience sees in my work something I didn't put there, I am not going to take that experience away from them. This probably says more about them than it does about me.

While I am a man of principle, there is one thing I like more - money.

I will delete it for $2,000. For $5,000 I will apologize. For $10,000 I will use daemonarchy exclusively for 6 months on all my computers. For $25,000 I will not do anything. For $75,000 I will not post anything for a month.

https://liberapay.com/analognowhere
https://ko-fi.com/analognowhere

To everyone who likes my work, this message is for you (from said freebsd moderator) [cw ableist slur]: https://beige.party/@fuzzy/117510032933612034

To everyone else who feels personally attacked by my art: send money, you can end this here and now.

Thank you for your attention.

ps: i did not post anything on reddit, i just know the same person who has been cyberbullying me on the fediverse is a moderator of the freebsd subreddit

pls boost

#runbsd #omarchy #fediverse #fediart #unix_surrealism #swastika #freebsd #news

Alt...

PSAPANDS

BOMBSHELL TAPE STUNS THE PRESIDENCY

since this is being linked: here's the truth: https://merveilles.town/@prahou/117511205187027547

#content_review #omarchy #linux #runbsd #freebsd #comic #art #fediverse #programming #ai #neverslop

Alt...

Funhole Content Review OMARCHY 'ok, but can it suck my dick?' TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: you're not getting any money for porting it to freebsd, sucker! UNFAIR TREATMENT: I lost more friends by installing omarchy than when i killed my wife. If you dont stop, bryan is going to make a video about this. again. my friend lunic is still a little sick in the head. drawing the swastika: 7 helpful tips Interview with a victim of circumstance ONE FREE RUBY COUPON We need female models asap. dm if interested -FSF

The most rewarding part of my FOSS philosophy is championing a project you believe in: either committing code, writing docs, churning out blog posts and tutorials, donating money, or any combination your free time and wallet can survive.
And the *second* most rewarding part? When that project turns its back on you, you're perfectly free to keep using it, grudgingly, because you have no other choice, while committing nothing, documenting nothing, writing nothing, never mentioning it again, and not donating a single cent.

Freedom, as promised.

#foss #freebsd

In this Q3 2026 FreeBSD Journal article, Sven Rüdiger explores how Sylve, a browser-based management interface for FreeBSD, can simplify home lab management by unifying virtual machines, jails, and ZFS storage.

Read the full article: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/browser-based-edition/production-deployments/consolidating-a-home-lab-with-sylve/

#FreeBSD #FreeBSDJournal #OpenSource #Virtualization #ZFS

Please don't scroll past. This is important.

I am being pressured by FreeBSD's reddit moderation team to censor the Omarchy #content_review or to remove it completely. They have began a harrasment campaign with the goal of removing me from this world.

the review: https://merveilles.town/@prahou/117501303459299869

The issue at hand is that a picture of a partial swastika appears in close proximity to the word FreeBSD, this they perceive as an attack on the FreeBSD project - if you've seen a newspaper before, you might understand the principle of two separate unrelated articles appearing next to each other. You might also understand that I am reporting on common associations with the Topic of the review. These are not my inventions, and I am not calling anyone anything. I am reporting on the news. Nevertheless, as much as I am a journalist, I am an artistè, and if my audience sees in my work something I didn't put there, I am not going to take that experience away from them. This probably says more about them than it does about me.

While I am a man of principle, there is one thing I like more - money.

I will delete it for $2,000. For $5,000 I will apologize. For $10,000 I will use daemonarchy exclusively for 6 months on all my computers. For $25,000 I will kill a small animal of your choice. For $75,000 I will not post anything for a month.

https://liberapay.com/analognowhere
https://ko-fi.com/analognowhere

To everyone who likes my work, this message is for you (from said freebsd moderator) [cw ableist slur]: https://beige.party/@fuzzy/117510032933612034

To everyone else who feels personally attacked by my art: send money, you can end this here and now.

Thank you for your attention.

ps: i did not post anything on reddit, i just know the same person who has been cyberbullying me on the fediverse is a moderator of the freebsd subreddit

pls boost

#runbsd #omarchy #fediverse #fediart #unix_surrealism #swastika #freebsd #news

Alt...

PSAPANDS

OK #BSD family whose going to tell them how much sense it makes first? 😉

#FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

Decommissioned one (unreliable) Router for AS201379 (an IXP edge). Now down from 5 to 4. Still 116 peers and 5 Upstreams:

https://bgp.tools/as/201379#connectivity

Also updated my AUT_NUM object in Ripe database and the PeeringDB entry.

#BGP #IPv6 #FreeBSD #Routing #Internet

My ThinkPad T480 now boots with the FreeBSD orb instead of the Lenovo logo

No Windows needed, all done from FreeBSD 15.1:
- extract Lenovo's bootable BIOS ISO with geteltorito (it's in ports!)
- mdconfig + mount_msdosfs, drop a LOGO.JPG (≤60 KB, ≤768×432) into FLASH/
- dd to a USB stick, F12, "Update system program", answer Y to the logo prompt

Bonus: BIOS 1.53 -> 1.56 along the way.

Inspired by https://justine.smithies.me.uk/updating-the-bios-and-boot-logo-on-a-thinkpad-p14s-running-freebsd.html from @justine

#FreeBSD #ThinkPad #RunBSD

Alt...

Closer view of the ThinkPad T480 boot screen showing the red FreeBSD orb logo above the text ‚To interrupt normal startup, press Enter‘, with the keyboard and red TrackPoint in the foreground.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟭𝟬/𝟮𝟲 (Valuable News - 2026/10/26) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/10/26/valuable-news-2026-10-26/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

Pour les FreeBSDistes Franciliens, deux événements où je cherche des candidats pour m'aider à tenir le stand FreeBSD:

Le 5 décembre 2026, PSL XXL
au Carrefour Numérique de la Cité des Sciences, la Villette

Le 9 et 10 décembre 2026, Open Source Experience
à Paris Porte de Versailles

Vous pouvez vous inscrire ici: https://storage.bebik.net/s/KAD8jxyr8QoMZLo

#FreeBSD

Spread the news 📣

We are excited to announce the BSD, illumos, OpenZFS, bhyve Devroom was accepted @ FOSDEM'27

The CFP is open, all the details are on the website
https://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigo/fosdem27/

You can now start submitting your proposals till December, but of course the sooner, the better.

#FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #OpenBSD, #illumos, #zfs, #bhyve, #Fosdem , #fosdem2027

I've packaged the OpenPGP card Rust tools by @hko and @wiktor as #FreeBSD ports

oct: manage your OpenPGP card
oct-git: sign Git commits with your card
openpgp-card-ssh-agent: SSH agent, keys stay on the card

Until they land in the ports tree, grab them here:
https://codeberg.org/Larvitz/freebsd-openpgp-card-ports

The new-port PRs need a committer, so testing and reviews are welcome:
https://bugs.freebsd.org/293960
https://bugs.freebsd.org/293961
https://bugs.freebsd.org/293962

#OpenPGP #Rust #YubiKey #Nitrokey

Manpage Monday: bastille limits

Keep a noisy jail from eating the whole host.
Powered by rctl + cpuset integrations.

Cap memory at 4G:
> bastille limits myjail set memoryuse 4G

Pin it to CPUs 0 and 1:
> bastille limits myjail set cpu 0,1

Clear every limit:
> bastille limits -a myjail reset

See `man bastille-limits` for more details.

#Bastille #FreeBSD #rctl #ManpageMonday

Psst... Coffee time at BSD Cafe! ☕️

It might be a little early, but if you fancy a sip of BSD, the Barista is ready to serve!

https://sip.bsd.cafe

PS: many of you are trying, so the images server is out of bandwidth. It may be a little slow to boot 😉

#BSDCafe #BSDCafePreview #RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #IT

Genuine question - for desktop use, how far off is NetBSD from FreeBSD?

I've just bought a second hand laptop to have as a permanent BSD machine. I've played with both OS's before on other laptops and Raspberry Pi's but from my limited testing , NetBSD is more at home as a server OS, albeit still behind FreeBSD, but a solid option all the same.

I will test both OS's on it and I know NetBSD has seen a jolt in interest lately, due to its anti AI stance, but ultimately, I will probably stick with FreeBSD ,until NetBSD can offer the same experience. I may stay with FreeBSD permanently, if they decide to take a firm stance and not strandle the fence with AI.

Again all this based from my limited testing and experience and a large amount of fediverse posts on the subject.

Any advice from the BSD crowd.

(I know this seems hypocritical about AI, especially as I rely heavily still on cachyOS for a gaming PC and Alpine Linux for my servers but I really hope the future is bright for BSD's and a complete move of everything, eventually may be an option )

#netbsd
#freebsd
#unix

🚧 Achtung, Wartungsarbeiten 🚧

Heute Abend, ab ca. 21:30 Uhr, werden wir ein größeres Update des #FreeBSD Betriebssystems vornehmen.

Die Downtime sollte maximal 30 Minuten betragen.

BOMBSHELL TAPE STUNS THE PRESIDENCY

#content_review #omarchy #linux #runbsd #freebsd #comic #art #fediverse #programming #ai #neverslop

Alt...

Funhole Content Review OMARCHY 'ok, but can it suck my dick?' TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: you're not getting any money for porting it to freebsd, sucker! UNFAIR TREATMENT: I lost more friends by installing omarchy than when i killed my wife. If you dont stop, bryan is going to make a video about this. again. my friend lunic is still a little sick in the head. drawing the swastika: 7 helpful tips Interview with a victim of circumstance ONE FREE RUBY COUPON We need female models asap. dm if interested -FSF

@stefano I thought, silently, of many things when I moved from the Cafe.

A single-user instance was amongst my thoughts. It's a possibility, however I can't imagine it becoming a priority.

I'm more interested in spending my "IT" time on stuff that's directly related, or adjacent, to FreeBSD.

#Mastodon #FreeBSD #UNIX #Linux

Follow-up from today's #MastoAdmin session 🛠️

Our monitoring and search backends got some love too:

• Patched, and they now monitor themselves
• Dead man's switch: Prometheus -> Alertmanager -> Uptime Kuma, so we notice if monitoring itself dies
• Found an MTU black hole: our VXLAN allows 1332, FreeBSD guests sat at 1500. Small packets fine, big ones silently vanished 🙈
• Grafana cleaned up, broken analytics dashboard fixed

#FreeBSD #Grafana #Mastodon @tux

Alt...

Grafana dashboard "burningboard.net — Operations", dark theme. Instance Health: four green tiles, node_exporter, jail_exporter, postgres_exporter and sidekiq_exporter, all "UP". System Resources: gauges for CPU 9.7 %, memory 66.2 % and ZFS pool zroot capacity 58 %. A CPU graph from about 11:00 to 17:00 mostly stays below 20 %, with a peak around 40–50 % near 12:30. A network throughput graph shows a burst of up to about 140 Mb/s between 12:30 and 13:45, otherwise near zero. A memory breakdown graph shows active memory around 5.6 GiB and wired around 4.5 GiB of 16 GiB, with a dip around 12:00 (reboot). Storage & S3: ZFS pool free 62.7 GiB, fragmentation 80 %, pool health ONLINE, Mastodon database size 39.6 GiB, S3 bucket size 248 GiB, about 1.08 million S3 objects.

3/3 One thing you might have noticed: between Oct 22 and today, burningboard.net could not send any e-mail. After a package cleanup, the mail configuration pointed to a CA certificate file that no longer existed. It's fixed now.

If you were waiting for a confirmation or password reset mail, please just request it again. Sorry about that!

Tonight we're repacking the database (pg_repack) to get rid of bloat. You shouldn't notice anything.

Thanks for your patience, and enjoy your weekend! 💚

#MastoAdmin #FreeBSD

Maintenance report for burningboard.net 🛠️ 🧵 1/3

Highlight of the day: all internal traffic now runs over #IPv6 only! 🎉

Our instance runs on #FreeBSD in separate jails: nginx, Puma/streaming, Sidekiq and the database. Every jail has had IPv6 from day one, but some of the services still talked to each other over private IPv4.

Not anymore:

• nginx -> Puma & streaming
• Rails, Sidekiq & streaming -> PostgreSQL & Valkey
• Prometheus exporters, Loki, OpenSearch
• DNS resolvers

Internal connections now use hostnames from one shared hosts file that only contains IPv6 addresses, so a name automatically means IPv6. PostgreSQL and Valkey no longer listen on IPv4 at all, and the internal IPv4 (pf) firewall rules are gone.

IPv4 is only left where the Internet still needs it: incoming to nginx, and outgoing to servers without IPv6.

📸 sockstat and pg_stat_activity: not a single IPv4 address left inside.

#MastoAdmin #Mastodon #Bastille #FreeBSD #Unix #IPv6

Alt...

Terminal output from four FreeBSD jails: only nginx listens on IPv4 (ports 80/443). Puma, streaming, Sidekiq, PostgreSQL and Valkey listen on IPv6 addresses only. All PostgreSQL connections (17 Sidekiq, 9 web, 1 exporter) and all Valkey connections (23 web, 58 Sidekiq) come from IPv6 addresses.

Happy Friday #FreeBSD

Now that I'm really getting back into the BSDs, I wanted to give GhostBSD a good test to see if it would make it easier for folks to move away from Linux. The answer is a resounding, yes! I know that the project is using XLibre, which is a non-starter for many folks. I'm not thrilled about it, either, but if you're wanting to move to FreeBSD, and you're not a really technical person, this would be a great way to do it. Literally, the install is something like 4 or 5 steps and then you have a fully functioning BSD system. Sure, with the installer being easier, you won't have as much control over the install but a lot of people aren't really concerned about that and just want to make a move away from Linux (or Windows, for that matter).

I decided to go with the Xfce Community version. The install took about 10 minutes on my ThinkPad L14 laptop. When the install completed, I had a very nice desktop with functional wireless (huge bonus!). Updating the system is super easy, too. I was told there were updates, clicked on update, and a few minutes later, the process was complete. It even upgraded Firefox to the latest release.

For me, the only issue is that XLibre is used, but I am going to look past that issue for now and continue to test GhostBSD.

#bsd #ghostbsd #freebsd

Tomorrow, Saturday, October 24, 2026, I'll be speaking at Linux Day in Modena, with a talk titled "Beyond Linux: A Journey Through the Open Source Ecosystem."

Will I talk about Linux? Of course. But I'll also talk about BSD, illumos, monocultures, and why we should never forget that there are always other paths worth exploring.

Linux proved that an alternative was possible. It would be a shame if that alternative became, in turn, a new imposition.

Because monocultures are a problem, even in the Open Source world. And because freedom isn't about everyone doing things the same way, but about being able to choose a different way.

Open Source and closed minds don't mix.

https://makeitmodena.comune.modena.it/makeitmodena/eventi/24-ottobre-2026-linux-day

#Linux #LinuxDay #IT #OwnYourData #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #LinuxDay2026

Domani, sabato 24 ottobre 2026, sarò al Linux Day di Modena con un intervento dal titolo «Oltre Linux: viaggio nell'ecosistema Open Source».

Parlerò di Linux? Certamente. Ma parlerò anche di BSD, illumos, di monoculture e di quanto sia importante non dimenticare che esistono sempre altre strade.

Linux ha dimostrato che un'alternativa era possibile. Sarebbe un peccato se quell'alternativa diventasse, a sua volta, una nuova imposizione.

Perché le monoculture sono un problema, anche nel mondo Open Source. E perché la libertà non è fare tutti le cose allo stesso modo, ma poter scegliere di farle diversamente.

Open Source e Closed Mind non vanno mai d'accordo.

https://makeitmodena.comune.modena.it/makeitmodena/eventi/24-ottobre-2026-linux-day

#Linux #LinuxDay #IT #OwnYourData #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #LinuxDay2026

The recording of the October 22nd, 2026 #bhyve Production User Call is up:

https://youtu.be/MRnpR4jaWp0

We discussed recent security incidents, Hans' CPU ID work, migrating to Sylve from TrueNAS and VMware, how #FreeBSD STABLE became stable, release engineering, FreeBSD and #illumos feature parity opportunities, analyzing the FreeBSD Handbook with an LLM, GPU Pass-Through, CPU/GPU bottlenecks, and more!

"Don't forget to slam those Like and Subscribe buttons."

You can support all Call For Testing efforts via BSD Fund: https://bsdfund.org

This content is not AI generated

php2shell was fixed in the FreeBSD ports tree within a day, but the arm64 packages weren't built yet. My jail host runs on arm64.

So I built PHP 8.5.12 myself, without Poudriere: a throwaway Bastille jail, a 2026Q4 ports checkout, binary dependencies from pkg, and a small local pkg repository for the affected jails.

Also in there: the mistake that almost cost me all 32 packages.

https://blog.hofstede.it/php2shell-on-arm64-building-fixed-php-packages-without-poudriere/

#FreeBSD #PHP #php2shell #Bastille #arm64

Maintenance done on burningboard.net 🔧

- Full patch run: host and all jails now on FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE-p6
- Package repos switched from quarterly to latest
- eMudhra CA situation mitigated: base already dropped the emSign roots, but ca_root_nss still shipped them and certctl pulled them right back in. Both are now explicitly marked untrusted on the host and in every jail.

- Systems rebooted, everything back up

Bonus: said goodbye to Python 3.11 🐍👋

Thanks for your patience!

#FreeBSD #TLS #eMudhra #MastoAdmin #Mastodon #ITSec @tux

Nothing like a couple of critical CVEs to completely derail a day.

How badly did it derail your day?

#FreeBSD #BastilleBSD

We need moooaar cooores!

#FreeBSD #php

Alt...

Poudriere web interface, compiling php and dependencies

Another day where running an opinionated stack including #HAProxy #Phoenix and #FreeBSD leaves me feeling a lot safer than the average organisation.

Stay safe out there team #PHP.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟭𝟬/𝟭𝟵 (Valuable News - 2026/10/19) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/10/19/valuable-news-2026-10-19/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

Manpage Monday: bastille zfs

ZFS snapshots for your jails, without the ZFS syntax.

Snapshot a jail
> bastille zfs myjail snapshot

Roll back to the last snapshot
> bastille zfs myjail rollback

Check dataset disk usage
> bastille zfs myjail df

You can also get/set props or jail an extra dataset.

See `man bastille-zfs` for more details.

#Bastille #FreeBSD #ZFS #ManpageMonday

Hey ZFS folks: If I am running PostgreSQL 18, can I use an 8k recordsize on the dataset? What about the WAL directory? Does that stay in a separate dataset with a different recordsize or does it all go together?

Thanks so much!

Please boost for visiblity!

#FreeBSD #PostgreSQL #ZFS

@cc nit:

TrueNAS SCALE became Community Edition a few months ago. 2025, if I recall correctly.

https://www.truenas.com/docs/softwarestatus/

#FreeBSD #Linux #TrueNAS

Heute so: Migration von TrueNAS CORE -> TrueNAS SCALE bei einem Kunden.
Also quasi der komplette Server – Daten, VMs, das volle Programm.
Wir reden hier immerhin von einem Wechsel von #FreeBSD nach #Linux, was auch eine komplette Änderung des genutzten VM Stacks bedeutet (BHYVE -> KVM)!

Der Plan war simpel: #ZFS-Replikation auf die neue Kiste, Snapshots inklusive. Nach ein paar Anpassungen liefen die VMen einfach wieder an. Einziger manueller Kraftaufwand: Netzwerkschnittstellen – der Klassiker bei jedem Umzug.
Ohne den wär's fast verdächtig glatt gelaufen.

Und mal ehrlich: #ZFS ist bei so was wirklich ein Geschenk des Himmels.
Was woanders ein schweißtreibendes Kopier-Karussell mit Bangen um die Daten wäre, ist mit ZFS-Replikation eher ein gemütliches:

• Replizieren
• Kaffee holen
• Anpassen, starten, fertig

Und falls ihr vor so einem Umzug steht und euch nicht so recht traut: Meldet euch einfach bei mir. Egal ob CORE zu SCALE, ein ganzes NAS oder nur eine kleine ZFS-Frage – ich helfe gerne. Wer noch auf CORE hängt: Die Migration auf SCALE ist weniger dramatisch, als man denkt. Versprochen!

#TrueNAS #ZFS #Homelab #Sysadmin #Migration #OpenSource

@ricardo thanks.

https://endoflife.date/linux agrees with the date.

#FreeBSD #Linuxulator #Linux #kernel

Good morning, #Fediverse
It's a warm Sunday morning, I'm supposed to be doing something more urgent but I'm totally stuck in a dilemma:
FreeBSD or SmartOS for that new setup?

Life can be hard.

#FreeBSD #illumos #SmartOS

RE: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@netbsd/117455748417638482

During episode 132 of Linux After Dark from @latenightlinux, the hosts talked about how they could recapture the passion they once had for computers and technology. This episode got me thinking quite a lot. I've been a Linux user for more than 30 years and, admittedly, my excitement for tech was dying. Actually, it had been dying for a few years. Shitty comments from Torvalds, many projects embracing AI, and maybe even the fact that I had been using Linux for so many years, contributed to my, well, less that excited feelings about all of it. I know that I needed a change.

I may have found something that has rekindled my love and excitement. And that something is BSD. After a few months of struggling to get a BSD installed on my hardware (laptop and desktop), with the help of many here in the Fediverse over the past month or so, I finally got NetBSD installed on my laptop and desktop. It was exciting! I'm actually feeling the way I did when I first started using Linux all those years ago. I have to work a bit to get some hardware working, I have to do a lot of reading and research, and I've even joined some IRC channels and forums. Forums. Remember those?

I'm leaving Linux behind and moving on after more than 30 years. This isn't a decision that I take lightly. Quite the contrary. It's one of the hardest decisions that I've ever had to make. I spent those 30+ years preaching about how great Linux was and even moved a lot of people away from Windows to Linux and Open Source software over the years. And for a lack of a better description, I feel betrayed by the Linux kernel project and all of the open source projects who have decided to embrace AI, even with all of terrible ethical issues.

Well, anyway, I didn't write this to bash on Linux. I wrote this because I'm starting to feel excited about tech again. I may even start writing about my move from Linux BSD and how it's all going. The good things. The struggles. And everything in between.

Okay, I've put enough people to sleep with this post. I have a long road ahead of me before I feel as comfortable with BSD as I do with Linux, but I think that is where all the excitement is.

#bsd #netbsd #freebsd #openbsd #linux #noAI

NetBSD Foundation 🚩 » 🌐 2026-10-17
@netbsd@mastodon.sdf.org

Some #NetBSD questions that keep coming up.

We don't use modules for HW drivers in the default install. All baked into the kernel. If you're curious about desktop hardware, for x86 there are lists https://wiki.netbsd.org/laptops/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/gpus/ (and the pci/usb manual pages)

x86 virtual machines. https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-virt.html#chap-virt-guest

For disk encryption there's different options, such as creating a small root with the installer, then adding encrypted partitions later (see man cgdconfig). Also: cgdroot.

There are decisions you don’t like to make — and you like implementing them even less. Take choosing an operating system, for example. Unfortunately, it’s not very productive to insist on open-source systems if they don’t work flawlessly on your own hardware.

Take, for example, my new Asus NUC 16 Pro with an Intel Ultra X7 processor and its built-in (soldered) components. The only Linux distribution that runs smoothly on it is Fedora. However, for political reasons (the U.S.), I no longer want to use it (although, from a user’s perspective, I do miss it—it’s simply the best Linux, period). But I haven’t been able to get U.S.-independent distributions like Debian to run properly on it; in some cases, the system wasn’t even recognized when I tried installing them from a USB drive. Another new experience… but then again, I’ve never had such relatively brand-new hardware that also requires a cutting-edge kernel. Maybe Ubuntu would work, but I don’t like Ubuntu or Canonical. That’s why I’m running Windows 11 Pro on it. Reluctantly, but everything works.

The same goes for my old ThinkPad T490s. Everything works wonderfully with any Linux distribution—except for the 5G modem. And I need that when I’m on the go. There’s no workaround for it either; I’ve probably scoured the entire web for one, but not a single tip helped. So here, too: Windows...

Now I actually have two Windows computers running again, for the sake of my sanity and to save time. At least I’m using only local accounts and the strictest possible privacy settings and tweaks you can apply to Windows. And I only use those two computers when necessary.

Most of my work continues to run on my two Debian systems, the FreeBSD computer, and, when necessary, on the Mac as well.

Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I don’t want to let the devices sit around unused.

Is it just me, or are there others who feel torn like this???

#linux #opensource #freesoftware #windows #fedora #debian #freebsd #ubuntu #apple #usa