@harmoniousanger @kevinrns

This right here, but...

It's important to understand Debian's culture. A solid description is it's the bazaar from Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and The Bazaar." There is a strong emphasis on #decentralization over #cohesion and a strong #resistance to a top-down structure and #authority. Culturally, the devs and maintainers consider #code primary and #documentation a nice to have but not essential. Furthermore, there are no enforced documentation standards. With such decentralization and full autonomy from devs and maintainers, the end result is thousands of people doing whatever they want and documenting however they see fit. #Debian #developers also assume a high degree of #technical #competency from whoever uses it.

Concerning the Debian Wiki, there is no editor-in-chief nor any ownership and a reflection of its culture. The attitude is "if you want something better, be the one to do it." The #quality of articles varies wildly, from chicken scratch notes to a walk through.

With so much #resistance to authority and change, improving documentation is a real #challenge. That being said, the simplest solutions at the moment are:

1.) Adopt the Debian Administrator's Handbook and collaboratively maintain it.

2.) Improve the wiki by adding templates and freshness tags.

The organization, culture, and project are honestly so fascinating. Honestly, it blows me away that one of THE most #influential operating systems ever functions in such a beautifully chaotic way. I mean, it has hundreds of derivatives and forks under it including #Ubuntu and #Mint (which are incredibly successful on their own). It's paradoxical that something that large and influential has barely any coverage. People don't write books on Debian but there are plenty for #RHEL and Ubuntu. Heck, there are more books on #FreeBSD at this very moment than Debian....which also further gatekeeps the knowledge from people.

But....it's important to understand why and what Debian actually is. I use my operating systems to cars analogy. RHEL, Ubuntu, #SUSE are all like going to different dealerships and buying a #car. All commercial off the shelf products. Debian is like skipping the dealership and buying the car kit from which you build your own. It's so much more than the "DIY hacker distro" but a powerful #development base for #tech #projects. Not unlike building a Go-Kart, a monstrous 6x6 truck, or a sports car. It's #flexible, #powerful, and can be tailored to one's needs. But, like a car kit, there's no glossy manual, just #technical specs.

It assumes you know what you are doing or that you are willing to get your hands dirty to learn.

When viewed from this perspective, it makes sense why documentation is the way it is. I'm not saying it's right but for its documentation to be improved to being on par with other OSes it would require a massive organizational shift to being a centralized #cathedral.

#paradox #Linux #opensource #collaboration

Update: Can i please have money for food for christmas? i havent gotten ANY donations in months.

Main: I live in a transphobic and neglectful home, my family hates me and neglects me bc i am trans, nobody here respects my privacy or my basic autonomy, and im treated like garbage, i need urgent funds to afford my basic necessities like food, HRT, monthly bills, etc. please donate urgently.

Current Goal: 0$/1000$

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TrustedBSD – the project provides a set of security extensions for the FreeBSD operating system. The project was started by Robert Watson with the goal of implementing the concepts of the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation and the Orange Book. https://archiveos.org/trustedbsd/ #bsd #freebsd #cybersecurity

Oh #FreeBSD 15 su un non vecchissimo HP laptop...

con un upgrade di ram si potrebbe considerare una macchina pregevolissima...

After trying to install py311-magic-wormhole on a new #FreeBSD server and being confronted with a list of ~30 dependencies whose dependencies included things like xorgproto 😱 I had a moment of hesitation…

https://www.freshports.org/net/py-magic-wormhole

Minutes later, a cargo install --git produced a single lean binary from this Rust based reimplementation, that works like a charm:

https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole.rs

#wormhole

P.S. on Ubuntu the default wormhole install is a 26 MB snap package… but okay, at least it’s confined and all dependencies are hidden inside that snap.

Oof. I see that the #Rust crate nix has a binding for memfd_create on #FreeBSD but does *not* have the SHM_ANON constant for shm_open.

Good thing I can just use memfd_create, then…

I'm pondering the idea of generating a configuration file, running a program, and telling it to load its configuration file from a path like /dev/fd/42.

Back in #Linux 3.17, the new memfd_create system call appeared. Seems perfect for this. But it's Linux-only.

#FreeBSD has long had an equivalent: shm_open using SHM_ANON as the file name. So, I'd need a different code path if I ever want this to run on FreeBSD.

But, conveniently, they added Linux's memfd_create in FreeBSD 13.0.

Sweet.

Update: Can i please have money for food for christmas? i havent gotten ANY donations in months.

Main: I live in a transphobic and neglectful home, my family hates me and neglects me bc i am trans, nobody here respects my privacy or my basic autonomy, and im treated like garbage, i need urgent funds to afford my basic necessities like food, HRT, monthly bills, etc. please donate urgently.

Current Goal: 0$/1000$

Payment Information:

paypal: https://paypal.me/redvelvetxxx

cashapp: https://cash.app/vparagon

cashapp referral (i make 5$): https://cash.app/app/QPL1BJF

monero address: 8576pqM8cmNW92eogjqnYzEewZbmwUbY61xRcGmbVCFphchaXKyAad1Xj9oNrYWQNqZkcm2kCHEzea4Y5Wd3DMUW4DozSV2

@lgbtq @FediAid @mutualaid @mutualaid @disability @trans

#mutualaid #mutualaidrequest #donate #donation #fundraiser #crowdfunding #crowdfund #transmutualaid #transcrowdfund #queermutualaid #disabilitymutualaid #emergencycrowdfund #helpfolkslive2025 #begpost #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtqia2 #queer #queeradvocacy #trans #transgender #transfem #transfemme #transbian #lesbian #gay #anarchism #anarchist #anarchy #communism #communist #socialism #socialist #marxism #leninism #maoism #marxismleninism #marxismleninismmaoism #xmr #monero #crypto #linux #bsd #freebsd #foss #opensource #freesoftware

@ajroach42

That sounds like a really good plan. If the installer can use your wifi and get online, then you should be golden.

Download [the handbook] onto another device so you can have it handy when you're setting up your GUI of choice. It's quite well-written, and there's only a couple steps needed to get the GUI going: from memory, it's just a matter of installing and enabling the right video driver, and of course the GUI programs/desktop/environment you want. I'm running sway (Wayland) happily on it now, I know other folks have gotten KDE Plasma working.

Expect not-wonderful wifi speeds, but it's fine for casual browsing. Newer intel wifi chips might do better because of newer drivers. It's something they're actively working on.

If the installer isn't able to get online, you may run into problems, and might need to try a cheap USB dongle or try a different USB, or some other solution. But thinkpads are usually pretty well-supported. This x260 has been perfect.

If you get stuck, just holler. Lots of really friendly and helpful #FreeBSD folks on fedi! #OpenBSD and #NetBSD, too!

@ajroach42

I think #OpenBSD has the best combo of ease of setup and hardware support at this time, but #FreeBSD is advancing every month.

FreeBSD doesn't give you a GUI by default (and it's a little more involved than just installing X11 or Wayland, but it's not too bad), but they're working on adding that to the installer.

Both of those BSDs have been making great progress the past couple years.

Update: Can i please have money for food for christmas? i havent gotten ANY donations in months.

Main: I live in a transphobic and neglectful home, my family hates me and neglects me bc i am trans, nobody here respects my privacy or my basic autonomy, and im treated like garbage, i need urgent funds to afford my basic necessities like food, HRT, monthly bills, etc. please donate urgently.

Current Goal: 0$/1000$

Payment Information:

paypal: https://paypal.me/redvelvetxxx

cashapp: https://cash.app/vparagon

cashapp referral (i make 5$): https://cash.app/app/QPL1BJF

monero address: 8576pqM8cmNW92eogjqnYzEewZbmwUbY61xRcGmbVCFphchaXKyAad1Xj9oNrYWQNqZkcm2kCHEzea4Y5Wd3DMUW4DozSV2

@lgbtq @FediAid @mutualaid @mutualaid @disability @trans

#mutualaid #mutualaidrequest #donate #donation #fundraiser #crowdfunding #crowdfund #transmutualaid #transcrowdfund #queermutualaid #disabilitymutualaid #emergencycrowdfund #helpfolkslive2025 #begpost #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtqia2 #queer #queeradvocacy #trans #transgender #transfem #transfemme #transbian #lesbian #gay #anarchism #anarchist #anarchy #communism #communist #socialism #socialist #marxism #leninism #maoism #marxismleninism #marxismleninismmaoism #xmr #monero #crypto #linux #bsd #freebsd #foss #opensource #freesoftware

I have some spare time tonight to troubleshoot the first #laptop where the #FreeBSD 15 installation gave me such a hard time.

It's definitely not FreeBSD and there are some increasingly wonky problems with the laptop. For starters, the wired NIC isn't recognized at all. Second, the laptop no longer can boot from the USB optical drive. Third, the OS is now crashing hard due to page fault errors. It first crashed when I inserted a DVD. The console just started dumping info and rebooted. After the reboot, the system booted but just before I reached the login prompt it crashed hard *again*.

Wow.

Did you know that you can change the default base template(s) that apply to newly created jails?

The config file (`/usr/local/etc/bastille/bastille.conf`) defines the default templates for each major jail type:

The `bastille_template_*` values point to the sane base templates included with Bastille.

If you'd like to customize the creation-time templates that are applies, simply update the appropriate values

#FreeBSD #BastilleBSD #Automation

@mms @rl_dane @meka if any of you do get Steam to work on #FreeBSD let me know! I think WINE is broken in 15.0 because of the way it's packaged now

I want structured output from `pkg repositories` (e.g. JSON, XML, something).

The goal: parse the data via my code.

Here's what we're dealing with:

[22:44 r730-01 dvl ~] % pkg repositories local
local: {
url : "http://fedex.int.unixathome.org/packages/FreeBSD:14:amd64/",
enabled : yes,
priority : 0,
signature_type : "PUBKEY",
pubkey : "/etc/ssl/slocum.unixathome.org.cert"
}

Before I go coding which might break with each update, is there an existing method?

Thanks.

#FreeBSD #pkg

Any of my #FreeBSD friends know how to run steam? I got as far as "CVulkanTopology: failed to create vulkan instanceFailed to query vulkan gpu topology". Any ideas what it might mean? The full log: https://pastebin.com/xB2MezGy

Misadventures with #AI and #FreeBSD

forums.freebsd.org/threads/rtw…

Holy crap!

People gets fired for a couple of typos but the AI folks don't!

Update: Can i please have money for food for christmas? i havent gotten ANY donations in months.

Main: I live in a transphobic and neglectful home, my family hates me and neglects me bc i am trans, nobody here respects my privacy or my basic autonomy, and im treated like garbage, i need urgent funds to afford my basic necessities like food, HRT, monthly bills, etc. please donate urgently.

Current Goal: 0$/1000$

Payment Information:

paypal: https://paypal.me/redvelvetxxx

cashapp: https://cash.app/vparagon

cashapp referral (i make 5$): https://cash.app/app/QPL1BJF

monero address: 8576pqM8cmNW92eogjqnYzEewZbmwUbY61xRcGmbVCFphchaXKyAad1Xj9oNrYWQNqZkcm2kCHEzea4Y5Wd3DMUW4DozSV2

@lgbtq @FediAid @mutualaid @mutualaid @disability @trans

#mutualaid #mutualaidrequest #donate #donation #fundraiser #crowdfunding #crowdfund #transmutualaid #transcrowdfund #queermutualaid #disabilitymutualaid #emergencycrowdfund #helpfolkslive2025 #begpost #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtqia2 #queer #queeradvocacy #trans #transgender #transfem #transfemme #transbian #lesbian #gay #anarchism #anarchist #anarchy #communism #communist #socialism #socialist #marxism #leninism #maoism #marxismleninism #marxismleninismmaoism #xmr #monero #crypto #linux #bsd #freebsd #foss #opensource #freesoftware

"One or more devices are configured to use a non-native block size."

Follow along, correct my math.

https://dan.langille.org/2025/12/11/copying-everything-off-a-zpool-destroying-it-creating-a-new-one-and-copying-everything-back/

#FreeBSD #ZFS