Justin Sherrill – DragonFly BSD Digest

Michael Neumann’s recent iwm(4) update fixes signal to noise display in ifconfig. I am linking it to remind you to check your existing ratios now, while your network is fine. You then can tell what has changed weeks, months from now when your network goes haywire and you’re looking for a reason.

2024/04/24

Improved input device support for DragonFly

If you’ve had trouble with the touchpad on your laptop, this recent update may help. Note that the commit lists some config changes needed to take advantage of the new features.

2024/04/212024/04/20

Lazy Reading for 2024/04/21

Accidental ‘old web’ nostalgia theme this week.

BUTTERICK’S PRACTICAL TYPOGRAPHY. A very pretty site to read, unsurprisingly. (via)
SmolBSD: make your own BSD UNIX MicroVM. (via)
Email DNS Records Cheatsheet.
Timeline of the xz open source attack.
“Further Explorations” Now Available! If you missed the 50 Years of Text Games book.
The Mask of the Sun, a playthrough. The first of several articles, posted simply because I remember every screen in it.
The Wi-Fi only works when it’s raining. (via)
Kyrios, a fun blackletter font. (via)
Ways of Seeing, the website. I’ve mentioned that show before. (via)
“read, write, own” web. (via)
Read Me #5. Linked not for any particular segment, but for the writing style.
BSDCan 2024 registration is open.

2024/04/142024/04/11

Lazy Reading for 2024/04/14

If you sorta squint and tilt your head, it’s a games theme this week.

Roguelike vs. Roguelite: What’s the Difference? (via)
Awesome-Selfhosted. (also via)
rigg 1.0 released – a new way to run indie games on OpenBSD.
SEthernet: Modern, low-cost 10/100 Ethernet for the Macintosh SE and SE/30.
Mastodon for Apple II (][+, //c, IIe, and IIgs)
Hex marks the spot. (via)
pkgsrc-2024Q1 branch released, and NetBSD 10.0.
Further Explorations, the companion volume to 50 Years of Text Games, is available for standalone purchase. Related: merchandise.
The Greenwich prime meridian isn’t where it used to be.
FreeBSD Speedrun.
Terminal status bar with only stock tools.

Your unrelated music for the week: New Strategies for Modern Crime Vol 1. (via)

2024/04/09

I’ve said it about regex before

If you don’t know how to use regular expressions, and know it well, you are making your life harder in spectacular ways.

(posting now instead of for Lazy Reading cause it ought to be fixed by then.)

2024/04/072024/04/03

Lazy Reading for 2024/04/07

I’ve got an eclipse happening right over me tomorrow – hope it’s not cloudy!

Playing Piano to Control My Smart Home. MIDI could be considered an instruction set.
Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted. A case study from Harvard, not just an opinion piece.
One hour of the thruster sound from the 1979 video game LUNAR LANDER. Too many bits; sounds too modern. (via)
The Single File Philosophy. (via)
The Lost Worlds of Telnet. Galactic Trader looks fun. (via)
Master of Magic – The Official Rob Hubbard Softography. For C64 music history. (via)
Tiny undervalued hardware companions. Remember this at Christmastime.
The xz hack. I think it does not affect any BSD, going by the structure as described.
The First Appendix N.

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.

2024/04/032024/04/01

iwm(4) updates

iwm(4) on DragonFly has been updated, mostly with patches from the FreeBSD version of the network driver.

2024/04/022024/04/01

/proc/self/exe on DragonFly

/proc/self/exe now exists on DragonFly. This is probably most useful if you are porting software.

2024/03/312024/03/29

Lazy Reading for 2024/03/31

The mini-theme this week is all DragonFly. There’s been some commits lately to well-known tools so I’m going to gather them here.

A bugfix for FUSE led to it being re-enabled.
However, FUSE was designed in Linux-specific ways, so it does not translate well to BSD.
So, Matthew Dillon went to town.
Also, interfaces now automatically get a loopback route. This means wg(4) (i.e. WireGuard) devices can ping themselves.
vn(4) devices can now be detached.
mount_cd9660(8) (ISO mounting) gained a number of features.
And TeX Live 2024 for DragonFly is out.
DragonflyBSD on Acer Nitro AN515-51/58-XXX Laptops. (via)

2024/03/242024/03/22

Lazy Reading for 2024/03/24

I have been saving up posts from some long threads on the TUHS and COFF mailing lists, so you’re getting some esoteric history today.

Every OS Sucks. (Youtube, via)
Aztec C, which I did not know existed. (via)
“romcc is a C compiler which produces binaries which do not rely on RAM, but
instead only use CPU registers.“
Ford, first commercial BSD UNIX client. (via)
Random facts about rand().
Related: insults as random passphrases, a generator. (via)
paranoia, test your computer’s floating-point ability. (via)
Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know. (via)
Are We Watching The Internet Die? “Habsburg AI” (via)
The Coherent operating system. I’ve never heard of this before – a sort of clean-room UNIX. (via)
XigmaNAS, a horribly-named FreeNAS replacement. (via)
20 Years of NYC*BUG and Can We Handle 20 More? April 3rd.

2024/03/22

HardenedBSD talk tomorrow night

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

2024/03/172024/03/14

Lazy Reading for 2024/03/17

Command line / history is I guess the mini-theme.

ELIZA Effect, something important to remember about AI. From a dinosaur blog of all places.
The Art and History of Lettering Comics. Authoritative work from a master in the field. You have seen his work even if you do not realize it. (via)
State of the Terminal. (via)
The Life and Death of the Bulbdial Clock. Links to interesting sources.
Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way. (via)
Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast. (via)
Related: Structural Regular Expressions (PDF). You may not be surprised to see it’s by the author of sam. (via)
Followup: video is up for the most recent NYCBUG event, “NetBSD for the Advanced Minimalist“.
Editing long commands in your shell. (via)

2024/03/102024/03/05

Lazy Reading for 2024/03/10

No theme arose this week.

The Voyager Keyboard.
Important efibootmgr(8) Command.
Shift Happens is a fantastic set of books. Sold out, but dig around in the companion for gems like this.
History of the supercomputer, a video. (via)
Post-Scarcity Web Mapping. (via)
A history of the tty. In-depth!
The Quest to Decode the Mandelbrot Set, Math’s Famed Fractal. (via)
Player vs. Monster, a video game talk. (via)
nixbsd: An unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel. (via)
RGBtoHDMI, converts old computer RGB outputs to newer video with a Pi. (via, via)

2024/03/06

A less dangerous ping

It took almost 3 decades, but it’s much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with ping now.

2024/03/042024/02/22

March 6 NYCBUG meeting

The March 6 NYCBUG meeting is coming up, and it sounds like something I’d want to see: NetBSD for the Advanced Minimalist, working remote using only a $100 Pinebook. Be sure to RSVP if you can go cause this is in-person and they need to know who is coming into the NYU facility.