DragonFly now has the same math library (libm) as OpenBSD, replacing an earlier combined version of I think what NetBSD and FreeBSD ran. This doesn’t necessarily directly affect you, but it’s work worth doing; matching the underlying frameworks between BSDs helps everyone.
Short list this week – no particular reason.
- Profiling your file systems.
- Amiga Reloaded – A new Amiga motherboard using original MOS/CSG chips.
- Caves of Qud, a roguelike that even simulates greenscreen.
- And here’s 700 more roguelikes in a torrent.
- Web Design: the First 100 Years. (via multiple)
- The Mobile Web Sucks. Lots of good pull quotes here. (via)
- The story behind the world’s most ‘Elite’ computer escape key.
A lot of variety this week.
- tame(2) WIP, process sandboxing for OpenBSD.
- pbi vs pkg
- Is there a BSD that fits my needs?
- Which BSD is right for me?
- Hyperthreading + SMP + Intel graphics on OpenBSD
- EuroBSDCon 2015 Registration Is Open
- DiscoverBSD for 2015/07/20.
- Brute-force OpenSSH attacks. The default config is not vulnerable to this on DragonFly. FreeBSD’s config with PAM may be the only one. (via)
- Domesticating applications, OpenBSD style. (via)
- c2k15 reports on Undeadly: one, two, three, four.
- Here is a non-BSD containers explanation, and then here’s Docker on FreeBSD.
- Michael W. Lucas is giving a talk on August 20th at the Livingston County BSD User’s Group meeting. (That’s in Michigan, not the NY county where I work, darnit.)
- FreeBSD now has a Code of Conduct.
- Backgammon bug from at least 4.1a BSD, 3+ decades ago.
- Tag jumping in mandoc. (I like this idea)
- OpenBSD on Linode. Similar techniques might work for any BSD install. (via, via)
The 99th episode of BSDNow is about Gnome on FreeBSD, with interviews of Baptiste Daroussin and Ryan Lortie, plus more news that I was already planning to link to.
Sepherosa Ziehau has been doing a lot of work with various processors states to save power on DragonFly. He’s published a summary of how well the various P-state/C-state/mwait settings work. He found that setting a lower C-state can perversely improve performance.
For those saying “but how do I set these lower power states?”:
sysctl machdep.mwait.CX.idle: AUTODEEP
sysctl machdep.cpu_idle_hlt: 1 (or higher)
Do you have a ValleyView GPU? It now works much better in DragonFly, and there’s a new accelerated rendering branch to try out, too, if you follow that link.
Hey, my stickers arrived! You can order your own.
No theme, though I’ve been thinking about IPv6 lately. Mostly in a “oh man all that PLC equipment at work can barely do IPv4 this won’t be easy” sort of way.
- The Art of Monitoring. Accidentally pretty reports. (via)
- IPv6 usage projections. IPv6 usage is finally taking off. (via)
- Legacy IP. (same source as previous)
- Related: ARIN is down to just /24s for allocation.
- I’m sure everyone’s heard of the Oculus, but this Wearality thing looks a lot more affordable. (via, via)
- Stuff in Space. The neat part is that it’s in realtime. Search for “iss” and the one marked ZARYA, as far as I can tell, is the International Space Station. There’s people in there right now! (also via)
- “Ah, finally got my Emacs setup just how I like it” (via)
- TEMLIB, a SPARC v8 in software. (via)
- The Web We Have to Save. There are people whose entire online presence and business exists only on the ‘free’ platforms of other companies. That would worry me. (via)
- Three Dead Protocols. I like how the unironic enthusiasm comes through. Also haha, butts and sl pranks. (via)
- Announcing Apple IIgs System 6.0.2. (via)
Your unrelated comics link of the week: The Dr. Fun comic archives.
I seem to have In Other BSDs exactly 1 day off from the OPNsense release schedule, so far.
- A wild Puffy appeared! (via)
- FreeBSD 10.2-BETA2 Now Available
- Reducing RAM usage in pkgin
OPNsense 15.7.2 ReleasedOPNsense 15.7.3 Released- Lumina Desktop 0.8.5 Released
- Sudo Replacement Hits the Tree “doas”
- Making my RPI serial console work (on NetBSD)
- pkgsrc-2015Q2 packages for OS X now available
- mandoc: becoming the main BSD manual toolbox (BSDCan 2015 presentation)
- Bit the bullet and installed a pfSense router at work
- This ThinkPad Batteries thread is full of good information.
- The x201/x220/x230 series of ThinkPads seem to be universally recommended for BSD; especially OpenBSD. (My x220 at work, while it does not run a BSD, is fantastic)
- A bug that takes 45 intervening years to have an effect.
- NUMA in FreeBSD.
- CloudABI discussion/explanation, to some extent.
- recoverdisk(1), a program I did not know about. (via)
Michael W. Lucas is having an “open dinner” tomorrow, in Scottsdale, AZ. That means you get to talk about his tech books and BSD and conventions and whatever else enters collectively enters everyone’s heads, I assume, over dinner. (you buy your own food; the talking’s free) It sounds like a potential little mini-convention; you should go.
BSDNow 098 is up with the normal collection of news and links, plus an interview with David Meyer of Xinous – which I infer is using FreeBSD to underpin their main project. I always find the decision/planning around major commercial open source interesting, cause the open source aspect changes the game, so to speak.
There was a newer release of OpenSSL (1.0.1p) last week, so there’s a new revision of the DragonFly release – 4.2.3. There’s little major change other than the security fix for OpenSSL.
Those readers who can count past 2 may notice that there wasn’t a 4.2.2. We went straight from 4.2.1 to 4.2.3. That’s my fault. I screwed up tagging and Git doesn’t like repeated, deleted tags.
I don’t know enough about Erlang and LFE to say much other than “Hey, look at this article about installing LFE on DragonFly!” (via)
This is Thoughtful Consideration week.
- The Anti-Mac Interface. The future of interfaces is in some ways the opposite of good interface design circa 1986. (via)
- What was the technology stack driving the original Ultima Online servers? The resemblance to a classical MUD is not a surprise when you think about it. (via)
- The Harmful Consequences of Postel’s Maxim. I see this more as the 2.0 problem, which I don’t yet have a good link to describe. (via)
- My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Four
- CCCamp 2015 preordering is open. (via)
- Calvin and Markov. Markov chains are simple but fun. (via)
- On Port 80. Platforms that run on user content, but aren’t controlled by users, go downhill over time. It’s a repeating pattern. (via and via)
- A floppy drive with a survival mechanism. (via)
- keepachangelog.com. (via)
- The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive. (via)
- Post-memes. (via)
- The 2015 Postel Network Operator’s Scholarship is open, with entertaining selection criteria.
- Warcraft 3 in a browser. (via)
- The ARMiga Project. (via)
- The minimig-mist, also a recreated Amiga. (via previous link)
- Go garbage collection. It’s humor, not real. (via profmakx on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
Your unrelated game link of the week: Compare Javascript frameworks by playing the same game (well, game mechanism) in each: Breakouts. (via)
This is a week for unexpected BSD news – OpenBSD and Microsoft, a new 4.4BSD variant, and so on.
- Running a Plan 9 network on OpenBSD. (via)
- FreeNAS 10: Early M2 Preview.
- More BSDCan trip reports, from Warren Block, Christian Brueffer, Kamil Czekirda, and Shonali Balakrishna.
- DiscoverBSD for 2015/07/06.
- Microsoft Now OpenBSD Foundation Gold Contributor. Probably related to OpenSSH-in-Powershell.
- Also, SunSSH replaced by OpenSSH.
- OPNSense 15.7.1 out. 15.7 is apparently a release branch, so this is what you follow.
- pkgsrcCon 2015: A year of pkgsrc 2014 – 2015. All the presentations are online, in fact. (via)
- EuroBSDCon 2015 Preliminary Program Published.
- A new (to me) BSD: “LiteBSD is a variant of 4.4BSD operating system adapted for microcontrollers.” It’s BSD on some super–teeny hardware. I don’t know what I’d do with it, but I’d love to get something like that working.
- OpenBSD and Valgrind, instructions.
- If you’ve got Bitcoin and an urge to donate to OpenBSD, pace yourself.
- July 20th, Calgary: OpenBSD hackathon/discussion.
- pkgsrc 2015Q2 released.
- Moving pkgsrc-wip away from Sourceforge. Turns into a long argument about CVS.
- Yay cross-pollination! (and thanks to Sascha Wildner for turning up WARNS levels and fixing things, for years.)
- FreeBSD ports is now also using a quarterly model.
- FreeBSD now has the CloudABI model, sorta like Capsicum.
- FreeBSD Vagrant images can now be automatically uploaded to Google Compute Engine, VMware, and (new to me) Hashicorp Atlas.
- Fractal cells, a new BSD-based quick startup platform. Launching at end of month. (via)
Here’s how you test the console frame buffer on DragonFly, even though X is the way to go.
BSDNow 097 has even more links in the never-ending tide of BSDCan presentation videos, more news, and an interview with Lee Sharp, of SmallWall; apparently a continuation of the original software network (and BSD) product, m0n0wall.
There’s yet another security problem with OpenSSL, and it’s been updated in DragonFly. I’ll probably roll 4.2.2 this weekend so that it’s in the release image.
Some time ago, I acquired a Chromebook with the help of all you kind readers. Here’s a mini-report on how DragonFly works as a desktop.
The hardware: what I have is an Acer c720 Chromebook. The C720p is the touchscreen model, and is equally well-supported by DragonFly. A larger-capacity M.2 SSD (which is relatively easy to install) is the only real need, as the installed one is only 16G. It’s easy enough to see what the laptops look like; it’s nothing fancy but it’s suitably light.
The software: There’s a wide-ranging and complete install/tweak guide for the c720 and c720p on the DragonFly site. Note that it goes down to the point of even changing the keymap for the special keys on the keyboard.
Things I don’t like:
- The mousepad needs a physical click, not a tap, which decreases accuracy.
- There’s only 2G of RAM, and not expandable. You will notice this if you tend to open a lot of tabs when web browsing.
- I’ve had mousepad trouble, but I’m the only one reporting it, so I think it’s just bad hardware luck on my part.
Things I do like:
- pkg is a godsend, making installation and upgrades almost effortless. I’ve gone binary-only so far.
- Many things Just Work – for example, the xfce4 battery plugin.
- xscreensaver works great; even the 3D modules. I don’t know why it entertains me so.
- I haven’t run the battery out to make sure, but it looks like it would last a few hours. Suspend/hibernate are not supported, but low power modes are.
- There’s a lot of multi-touch shortcuts built into the touchpad.
It’s an excellent BSD laptop, for light use, at low cost. The next step up would be into Thinkpad territory, which raises the cost or increases the age – and may not be as consistently supported.