UNIXish – DragonFly BSD Digest

Bourne and his shell at NYCBUG this Wednesday

Justin Sherrill — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:13:05 +0000

Reminder: NYCBUG‘s next event is in two days. It’s “The Design of Unix Shell” with Stephen Bourne. You should go; it’s a chance to talk directly with the author of foundational software.

Update: apparently the slides for this talk have been ready for 48 years or so.

NYCBUG: The Design of Unix Shell, on May 13th

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:10:00 +0000

NYCBUG‘s next event, on 2026/05/13, is “The Design of Unix Shell” with Stephen Bourne. If you aren’t familiar with that name, you are probably using his software or something derived from it right now.

Lazy Reading for 2025/11/16

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:03:45 +0000

No theme, just fun.

Dithering, part 1. (via)
A1 DEADLINE SPECIAL. Resurrecting a high-water point in comics history with new stories. (via)
Ken Thompson interviewed in 2024. Talking about inventing UNIX.
Consider a year-end donation to NetBSD. (via)
Appendix N Jam. The winners. (via)
Advanced Readings in D&D, a series. Accidentally found while searching my own archives.
OS6, an operating system I hadn’t heard of before. (via)
Mr. TIFF. (via)
Brenda.
A Pentium in your hand. These are almost becoming common.

vi improvements

Justin Sherrill — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:15:27 +0000

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:

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

Lazy Reading for 2025/06/22

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 12:04:29 +0000

I’m on the road as I type this – though I’ll be back by the time it’s posted – and so the links are without much comment.

The Best Interfaces We Never Built.
The 80s were shit. (via)
Memory Banks.
Malleable Software. (via)
Lightweight C compilers.
Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux.
A year of funded FreeBSD.
Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74. Few people realize how much of the modern software world came right from what he did. (via)
So you should read Memories of Lisa for the details. (via)
Unveiling the EndBOX: A NetBSD-based embedded box for EndBASIC.
BoxyBSD. (via)
Look for the UNIX license plate.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: What’s the best comic I’ve ever read? Lynda Barry is a master of the form. (via)

Lazy Reading for 2024/08/25

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 12:03:41 +0000

Links are all over the map, but I mostly cleared my tab backlog.

Random sightings of UNIX in odd places. Also Vim. (mostly via)
Related: the classic not-UNIX page.
A note to myself about using traceroute to check for port reachability. Includes BSD comparisons.
Level Titles: Fighters and Thieves. Linked cause I like the title “Filcher”.
Gotta Block ’em All. AI scrapers are the new port scanners.
Remote Desktop using RDP and VNC.
FreeBSD Software Picks July 2024, a video. (via)
Fictional Brands Archive. (via)
Diagrams without context. (also via)
The Cremaster Cycle is on the Internet Archive. Warning: art film, crazy. (via)

Desktop enviroment checklist

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 21:05:34 +0000

A good checklist for build-your-own-desktop-env. (via)

BSD Now 476: Warren Toomey interview

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 01:02:22 +0000

This special episode of BSD Now has an interview with Warren Toomey. I just happened to sign up for the TUHS mailing list and let me tell you, there’s some history being reported there by the people that lived it.

Syscalls, listed

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:04:48 +0000

This is pretty esoteric, but all of DragonFly’s syscalls can be found in the links Aaron LI provided in this post. There’s code in there that dates back to Berkley UNIX.

BSD Now 439: Browser Tab Unix

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 16:14:28 +0000

There’s no pun in the title; this week’s BSD Now really links to a browser implementation of UNIX-ish resources. Is it POSIX? Not quite. Is it UNIX? No. Is it Linux? Probably using that as a reference, so it’s a copy of a copy. Still, interesting. There’s other articles too; don’t be distracted by my …

Continue reading "BSD Now 439: Browser Tab Unix"

In Other BSDs for 2022/01/22

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 13:50:55 +0000

The UNIX compliance link is worth reading all the way through; it is a chunk of history I did not know at all.

What goes into making an OS to be Unix compliant certified? Answered by the guy that led it at Apple. Note the relatively short time needed to do the same for FreeBSD. (via)
The OpenBSD BASED Challenge Day 6 and Day 7.
LibBSDDialog.
GhostBSD 22.01.12 ISO is now available.
Valuable News – 2022/01/17.
Wine 7 is released. FreeBSD is the only BSD for it I think. (via)
Suyimazu – Wine-based Game Launcher for FreeBSD. (via)
FreeBSD 13.0 Base Jails With ZFS and VNET. (via)
Cluster provisioning with Nomad and Pot on FreeBSD.
LLDB FreeBSD kernel debugging support summary.
Why the FreeBSD Desktop and my Linux Rant.
OpenBSD on the PinePhone. (via)
BSD based solutions virtualisation/clustering of resources for VMs.
LibreSSL update.

In Other BSDs for 2021/11/27

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 13:58:56 +0000

Relatively quiet this week for BSD items, but it’s a holiday week in the US.

Lazy Reading for 2021/10/10

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 12:51:20 +0000

UNIX history for the mini-theme this week.

Keyboard hacks for microwave ovens. (via)
Raspberry Pi SDR Cyberdeck.
Pong from the inside. (via)
multizork. (via)
André Arko Uses This.
Bringing the Unix Philosophy to the 21st Century. (via)
DOS Subsystem for Linux. Why why whywhywhywhy? (via)
Wizards and warriors, part five. (via)
Graphic Design History Resources. (via)
LAMP is dead! Long live (Perl) web frameworks. (via)
Stanley Kubrick liked UNIX. (via)
Our New Infrastructure.
Dali Clock on the TRS-80 CoCo.
50 Years of Text Games: 2007: El museo de las consciencias; Lieux communs.
Shiner ESB, an Apple Network Server prototype, and what it did at Netscape/MCom.

Your unrelated animation of the week: Cyriak Animator Pro.

In Other BSDs for 2021/07/17

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 12:56:43 +0000

More BUG meetings are happening, which is great.

Next ChiBUG meeting: in person, July 20th. I’ll post a reminder.
The slides from the most recent NYCBUG meeting.
The historical significance of DEC and the PDP-7, -8, -11 & VAX. The article itself is not about BSD, specifically, but some of the comments at the source link are.
A Glimpse of the Canon object.station 41. A NeXT iteration I didn’t know about. (via)
Meet the Summer 2021 [FreeBSD] Foundation Interns.
Status of Online Conference Software on FreeBSD.
Valuable News – 2021/07/05 and 2021/07/12.
Using youtube-dl on FreeBSD. Or any BSD, probably.
Repairing Akonadi on FreeBSD.
Filtering spam using Rspamd and OpenSMTPD on OpenBSD.
NetBSD/Desktop: Scalable Workstation Systems. Old but interesting. (via)
[Semibug] RAID 0 or 1 for OpenBSD. Follow the thread for more info.
Total Mastery, the bundle. Includes multiple FreeBSD Mastery books.

In Other BSDs for 2021/05/01

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 01 May 2021 13:01:15 +0000

There’s some opinions mixed in this week!

NetBSD VM on bhyve (on TrueNAS). (via)
FreeBSD 13 on a 12 year old laptop. (via)
OPNsense switches back to vanilla FreeBSD. (via)
Gemini Capsule in a FreeBSD Jail. (via)
Lexical File Names in Plan 9 or Getting Dot Dot Right. (PDF, via)
FVWM 3 and Quest for Comfortable NetBSD Desktop. (via)
It’s time to say goodbye to the GPL. (via)
Hunt the Wumpus on the AskHistorians Podcast. Pre-BSD.
FreeBSD meetings on the Desktop.
OpenBSD 6.9 is out, with this perk.
From Linux to BSD. (video, via)
FreeBSD 13.0 on Raspberry Pi 400 – Quick Look. (video, via)
Interview with Michael Lucas FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Unix, IT and other books author. (via)
FreeBSD Best Practices virtual panel discussion, 2 sessions. Related to WireGuard, I think.

New games on DragonFly

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 01:57:28 +0000

New to DragonFly, but not new to games. Aarom LI has added several old–school BSD games back to DragonFly mostly via NetBSD. It’s ching(6), gomoku(6), monop(6), and cgram(6).

Lazy Reading for 2021/01/31

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 13:54:16 +0000

Accidental theme of UNIX-ish history this week.

Finally got my Emacs setup just how I like it, internationalization edition. But are they clacky?
mouSTer Is a Universal USB-Mouse Adapter for Retro Computers. (via)
Examining a technology sample kit: IBM components from 1948 to 1986.
Folklore Generator. (via)
Things I’ve learned about A/UX. I think not a BSD so it goes here.
XTerm does graphics! (sort of). (via)
50 Years of Text Games: 1974: Super Star Trek.
Also from 1974: Moon Rocket Landing, for a calculator.
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is still developed and modern in 2021. Nostalgia for some readers. (via)
OpenVMS CDE Desktop Remote X session GUI. Linked cause it’s unexpected. (via)
Ben Zotto reconstructs a corrupted Apple II game he made in elementary school. Neat but multi-tweet stories on Twitter are just an easy way to lose information. (via)
The select command.
The Retro Mobile Gaming Database. (via)
The Subcreation Theory of J.R.R. Tolkien. (via)

Your unrelated music of the week: The Most Noble Adventures of Erebor’s Finest Son, In His Quest To Butcher Orcs And Save The World. “Metal, minus those boring verses, choruses and solos, thus leaving only the most metal of song components; riffs and slams.” It’s bebop in metal form, and if you understand that joke you are a music nerd and it’s wonderful. (via)

nanosleep and POSIX

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:54:57 +0000

POSIX is a sort of standard for UNIX maintained by the IEEE. Most UNIX-ish systems implement it to some extent, though I am not sure to what degree. There’s an open source version of the standard, and Aaron LI made nanosleep match up.

In Other BSDs for 2021/01/23

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 13:49:54 +0000

It’s the week of Very Long and Excited Page Titles that Give Me Long Link Lines.

FreeBSD Xfce4 on VMware Installation Guide. (via)
HardenedBSD 2020/12 Status Report. (via)
Creating Comfy FreeBSD Jails Using Standard Tools. (via)
Just realized this… Dennis Ritchie is the true innovator! Posted for the single comment.
Unix time is in its fourth quarter.
BSD license violations. (read down)
Exploring Swap on FreeBSD. (via)
Tiny PDP11 – Intro. BSD 2.11, VT102, cutest ever. (via)
Heidi Stettner had a dog named Biff, and that’s why mail notification exists.
Star Wars PDP-11/45. Not sure if it’s BSD or not. (via)
Accented characters using a US keyboard layout on OpenBSD.
OpenRadiant (3D modeller) – Binary distribution advice.
FreeBSD Desktop – Part 22 – Configuration – Aero Snap Extended.
Block spammers/abusive IPs with Pf-badhost in OpenBSD.
At a look at helloSystem 0.3.0 – Full on Mac-a-licious!
Minecraft ? 1.13 working on OpenBSD.
Valuable News – 2021/01/18.

Chat without servers

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 00:53:11 +0000

I always thought IRC was pretty decentralized, but I didn’t realize talk(1) was designed to work machine-to-machine. That means in theory that if you have a talk(1) binary on your machine, you could chat directly to anyone else with the same binary, even on a different platform. Since 4.3BSD! Anyway, I only realized this because of this recent bugfix thanks to Dan Cross.