grahamjperrin

… hostile to security researchers who report these issues.

Do you have an example?

I'm glad to see their sense of humour :-)

https://nitter.net/ffmpeg/status/2039115531744334180

That's unfortunate.

jruohonen the Bonnie Tyler face (GIF) is for the linked item, not at you :-)

What, this tired old crap again? How many more times?

https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExcXhvaXZydG...

anxiety around AI replacing developers

For the benefit of people who don't absorb the entire article (spoiler alert):

> … AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. …

all hail u/cperciva

Colin Percival (FreeBSD Primary Release Engineering Team Lead) longer uses that ID in Reddit.

Instead: /u/perciva

Most recently, in /r/freebsd https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1rphd7t/freebsd_14...

All hail.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Rust for Rust seems to be stale, but not yet categorised as such – https://wiki.freebsd.org/CategoryStale

In <https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-hackers/2025-Augu...> (August 2025), Konstantin Belousov (kib@) write:

There was a long and hot thread about 'Rust in base' recently. …

Unfortunately, the list archives are not suitably indexed by popular search engines, so, for example, https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=Rust+base+site%3A... does not find what's required. Sorry.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-Q4-2025-Status-Report includes Michael Larabel's quote from the final status report of 2025:

At some point in early 2026 the rust KPIs should be stable enough for interested developers to try writing new code with them. They will not be perfect, but I want to make sure they work roughly like existing drivers expect and also fit the expectations of rust developers before asking for testers. Hopefully the Apple drivers will be back up to parity with the initial WIP in C in the first half of 2026 as well.

FreeBsd is Systemd free.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/96pm7w/benno_rice_...

Benno Rice: The Tragedy of systemd – BSDCan 2018 : r/freebsd

Don't be misled by the title. I thoroughly recommend listening to the whole thing.

… I think I'd want to switch to pkgbase but that makes me nervous. …

There has been a disproportionate amount of negative noise from people who know too little about pkgbase.

pkgbase is a good thing. A very good thing. A huge game-changer, in terms of testing STABLE and CURRENT.

… the kernel shrinker API which has historically been a problem. …

Is that still a problem?

A few weeks ago I noted a change in ARC-related documentation for OpenZFS on Linux. I can't remember the details (I can find them, if necessary) but I do remember that it was a significant improvement for Linux users.

… Stable documentation allows time for it to be edited and revised to become better documentation,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47407895

Part of the problem is, too few committers. https://cgit.freebsd.org/doc/log/access?h=refs/internal/admi...

as well as developing quality translations. …

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=267274

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=284875#c8

For Russian, things are better: https://freshbsd.org/freebsd/doc?committer[]=Vladlen+Popolit... – see https://cgit.freebsd.org/doc/commit/access?h=refs/internal/a...

… For those that aren't familiar, ZFS isn't part of mainline Linux because of licensing incompatibility (and general distrust of Oracle). …

It's probably fair to say that trust in Oracle is irrelevant to OpenZFS.

Where Linux does use ZFS: to the best of my knowledge, it's typically OpenZFS – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47407937 is my own use case.

The condescending attitude of a minority of FreeBSD users is never an incentive to engage.

… Yes, as a comment in this sub-thread stated, jails exist …

https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/116168374700889783

Would anyone like to say something? …

… stable … about every 6 months.

Maybe slightly optimistic.

https://bokut.in/freebsd-patch-level-table/#stable/13

https://bokut.in/freebsd-patch-level-table/#stable/14

https://bokut.in/freebsd-patch-level-table/#stable/15

… ZFS was a huge selling point, but I heard that it works quite well on Linux, these days. …

True.

I have OpenZFS-native encrypted root-on-ZFS for Kubuntu 25.10, made ultra-simple by the installer for Ubuntu (25.04 at the time).

FreeBSD can not yet do this. Please see, for example, https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=263171

263171 – add loader(8) and boot loader menu support for boot with OpenZFS-encrypted ROOT

Regarding guides specifically, FreeBSD has exceptional resources: FreeBSD Handbook …

Ahem.

<https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1rpnd05/comment/o9...> for the ZFS chapter "… telling people to do the WRONG thing, …"

<https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1ru0k9u/comment/oa...> for the ports chapter "… misleading, it was wrongly updated: …"

– and so on.

… the project's documentation is a gold standard IMHO.

Documentation certainly is not gold standard. I'm a former doc tree committer, familiar with many of the bugs …

Anything more recent than a 2023 blog post?

The truth is that FreeBSD doesn't want casual users, …

I shouldn't overgeneralise.

https://github.com/orgs/FreeBSDFoundation/projects/1/views/3... … and so on.

The current expectation is that the desktop script, which was originally scheduled for inclusion with FreeBSD Installer for 15.0, will be included with 15.1.

A blocker, although this bug was not the reason for rescheduling:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=290024

No, it's not done. You forgot configuration.

yagni

TIL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_compared_to_other_dist... exists, but probably does not answer your question.

For Arch users of KDE Plasma and applications, are essential packages ever missing? <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Installation>

From https://gist.github.com/grahamperrin/307b8cdef5d4dcd30f5fdc4... for FreeBSD:

It's not unusual for a Tier 1 platform to have no package for a wanted desktop environment. Two platforms are at this tier: …

For example, kde for FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT was recently missing for a few days for AMD64; is still missing for aarch64 (64-bit ARMv8).

This is not to criticise the maintainers of packages or repos. I do understand the constraints.

The absence of an essential meta package is, inescapably, an impedance when aiming to test installers and upgrades, especially with pkgbase.

That's a tad dramatic, Daphne.

's0ix' is bullshit.

False. S0iX is not bullshit.

S3 suspend/resume worked just fine.

Not for me.

OK, that's clearer.

In any case, I'll take additional advice; it's impossible to trust apparently authoritative statements from you.

LSU context: the completeness is out of scope.

Current aims include enhancement of the installer for FreeBSD; KDE Plasma and applications as an option.

Yep, the coherence is a strong point.

Unfortunately, we now have a few people complaining about predictable, consistent behaviour with packaging that is coherent. The base system, FreeBSD, packaged.

The complaints are about the effect of wilful force.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

When I force something with my eyes shut (ignoring warnings), I do expect the unexpected as a result of my ignorance ;-)

I took it to mean, a relatively short period of time after funding became available. Bear in mind, it's a report from the Foundation.

Thanks.

I have a vague sense that kernel panics with iwlwifi should have been resolved before 14.3-RELEASE. Bugzilla should be fairly close to definitive, expect info to be copious but well-organised.

Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics], it's harder to find information.

I spent around a year trying to pinpoint the cause(s) of apparently random failures with different (older) hardware. After switching to Kubuntu on the same hardware, I suspect that the issue with FreeBSD was ACPI-related.

If you have crash files from kernel panics: it should be possible to identify, but not necessarily solve, a problem.