Goings-on – DragonFly BSD Digest

2025/12/072025/12/03

Lazy Reading for 2025/12/07

Happy birthday me!

Another Type 30 Display Reproduction At 36% Scale.
Corners of the Internet Database. Set some time aside for this. (via)
Obsidian merchandise is surprisingly nice. (via)
Reflections from TPAC 2025.
AI contributes code on GitHub. Time, not code generation, is the scarcest resource for open source. AI patching does not help.
Framing and World of Warcraft’s Rest System. (via)
XSscreensaver 6.13 is out, a minor update.
The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition.
Inside the Great Firewall Part 3: Geopolitical and Societal Ramifications. (via)
The best tape dispenser I’ve ever seen.

2025/12/032025/12/03

NYCBUG: Holiday Party & Lightning Talks & Tips tonight

NYCBUG’s holiday party / lightning talks event is tonight. If you can’t make it, it’ll be streamed on the website and available on IRC.

Note that the recorded stream from the last event, The Once and Future COBOL, is available on YouTube and PeerTube. I heard the speaker, James K. Lowden, talk about FreeTDS years ago and enjoyed it too.

2025/11/18

Some USB updates

libusb in DragonFly has had a few updates, mostly for compatibility with nut. Nut, incidentally, replaces the APC tools for backup power management I’ve always used.

Oddly, searching for a nut manpage led me to a utility I haven’t seen before – nut(1), for nutritional analysis.

2025/11/13

Make sure your Hammer cleanup cleans up

I meant to link this months ago: if you run DragonFly intermittently in a virtual machine, and it’s not left on overnight, it’ll never get around to automatic cleanup of the Hammer volumes. You could then run out of space. The fix is manually running the cleanup process.

2025/11/032025/11/06

Wednesday NYC*BUG: The Once and Future COBOL, James Lowden

That’s two days from now, on 11/5: James Lowden will be talking about COBOL and the gcobol in GCC, which is in part his fault. This should be good. RSVP and go, if you are near. Stream if you are not.

Update: here’s the video:

Peertube: https://toobnix.org/w/gHacaw1TMx7HqrUiZbHYjQ

Youtube: https://youtube.com/live/ldLIyticlNU

2025/10/282025/10/24

vi improvements

nvi2, which is what you get in DragonFly when you type “vi”, has been updated to version 2.2.2. The nvi2 README gives a little history of how many years this has been around. Close to 50? A family tree would be interesting.

Related: turning on vim mode in Obsidian gets you this entertaining dialog:

Vi mode confirmation dialog, where you are asked to show you know how to quit out of it before you start it.

Shouldn’t it be “vi mode”? Oh hey, look, an esoteric definition argument, just what you came to the Internet for.

2025/08/112025/08/09

Do you need crypto/opencrypto?

Not tokens of agreed value, but specifically, crypto(4) and crypto(9). Michael Neumann doesn’t see a use for them any more, so speak up if you need them.

2025/08/07

dm_target_crypt change in DragonFly

Are you encrypting your disk in DragonFly? If you are using dm_target_crypt, the ‘ng’ version is now the default. You may want to change your loader.conf.

2025/07/162025/07/15

certctl(8) not needed

I missed this some time ago, but: you may see errors about certctl(8) when upgrading your packages. It’s not necessary, yet.

2025/04/30

DragonFly 6.4.1 released

6.4.1, a bugfix upgrade to 6.4, is ready to download. The commit log from 6.4.0 to 6.4.1 is available if you want the details.

2025/02/252025/02/22

Building a custom live DragonFly image

I’ve mentioned it before, but custom live images are possible. Related: mkisofs(8) is no longer needed to build.

2025/01/07

NYC*BUG Wednesday: QEMU Virtualization

This Wednesday, Jim Brown presents on QEMU at NYCBUG’s monthly meeting. Go, if you are near, but RSVP first so you can get in. It should be streamed too.

2024/12/082024/11/29

Lazy Reading for 2024/12/08

Unofficial theme: synthesizers!

- How to Build a Chess Engine and Fail. (via)
- cablesoft. Finally, a ‘computers are bad’ story where I experienced (some of) the history described.
- Jon Makes Beats. Seeing synthesizers and samplers in use. (via)
- More synthesizer stuff: the Orchid. (via)
- Even more: Music Thing Modular Workshop System. (via)
- Using (only) a Linux terminal for my personal computing in 2024.
- more tales of the unscreenshotable.
- AI-powered Self Service Checkouts.
- Why pipes sometimes get “stuck”: buffering. (via)
- Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web. (via)
- Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground. Tabletop RPG history. (via)
- A Margaret Hamilton’s worth of printed code. (via)
- What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. (also via)

Your video experience of the week: Hundreds of Beavers. This was played in a theater in my town months ago and I missed it. I should have gone to see it on the big screen, but here it is on YouTube. (via)

2024/11/05

Docker and DragonFly, multiple methods

2 different ways to do Docker on DragonFly.

2024/05/14

A DragonFly BSD Taste

A ‘first try’ document for DragonFly.

2024/04/03

NYCBUG 20 years, tonight

George Rosamond is presenting on the 20th anniversary of I think the longest-lived BUG, NYCBUG, tonight. Go if you are near (and RSVP so they can let you in), but it’s also going to be streamed.

2024/03/22

HardenedBSD talk tomorrow night

It’s for COBUG, and details are available here.

2023/12/262023/12/25

New mirror added

Yao Ge has created a new DragonFly mirror in Nanjing, China. It’s on the mirrors page too.

2023/12/112023/12/11

ChiBUG tomorrow

ChiBUG is meeting in the normal place ~~tomorrow~~ on the 19th. Go, if you are near. (Plans changed after I posted this.)

2023/11/20

SemiBUG tomorrow: shell scripting presentation

SemiBUG is having a meeting tomorrow, the 21st, with a presentation on shell scripting. It’ll be online through Jitsi. Slides from Nick Holland’s last presentation are available, for the curious.