FreeBSD Resources

Foundation Letter Letter from the Foundation Thank you for spending time with the FreeBSD Journal this year. We’re grateful for our readers, as well as the authors, editors, and volunteers who bring each issue to life. Your passion and effort keep the Journal going and help share the work happening across the Project. Wishing you […]

Events Calendar 2026 Events Calendar By Anne Dickison BSD Events taking place through March 2026 Please send details of any FreeBSD related events or events that are of interest for FreeBSD users which are not listed here to freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. Code and ComplianceFOSDEM Edition January 26, 2026 Brussels, Belgium https://www.eclipse-foundation.events/event/code-compliance-2026/ Join us in Brussels for the […]

We Get Letters We Get Letters By Michael W Lucas Dear Why Do They Let You Write This Column, FreeBSD 15 is now out, and it includes the base system as packages. In the January/February 2022 issue of the FreeBSD Journal, you spent your entire column ranting about pkgbase. You were wrong. Obviously wrong. Is […]

Embedded FreeBSD: Building U-boot Embedded FreeBSD: Building U-boot By Christopher R. Bowman A reader wrote to me that he had trouble building U-boot, so I thought I’d walk through the process since I wanted to bring up a different Zynq board and would have to go through it anyway. I need to provide a disclaimer: […]

Credentials Transitions with mdo(1) and mac_do(4) Credentials Transitions with mdo(1) and mac_do(4) By Olivier Certner In this article, we explore how the mdo(1) program can be used to easily and quickly launch a new process with different credentials and how system administrators can enable credentials transitions initiated by unprivileged users by leveraging the mac_do(4) kernel […]

FreeBSD and Google Summer of Code 2025 FreeBSD and Google Summer of Code 2025 By Joe Mingrone T he successful completion of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2025 marks FreeBSD’s 21st consecutive year participating in the program. Three factors made this year stand out. First, we received 64 applications, which is more than double last […]

Vox FreeBSD: How Sound Works Vox FreeBSD: How Sound Works By Christos Margiolis Sound support for FreeBSD began in 1993, when Jordan K. Hubbard imported the generic Linux sound driver into FreeBSD, later known as the VoxWare sound drivers, written by Hannu Savolainen. Several new versions of the VoxWare drivers were imported (and modified) into […]

printf(“Hello, srcmgr\n”); printf(“Hello, srcmgr\n”); By Mark Johnston FreeBSD developers and devsummit attendees have likely heard of the newish srcmgr (“source manager”) team at some point. But seeing as it’s been a year or so since srcmgr started having regular calls, it seems time to introduce ourselves a bit more widely. srcmgr is a team of […]

Universal Flash Storage on FreeBSD Universal Flash Storage on FreeBSD By Jaeyoon Choi Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is a high-performance, low-power storage interface designed for mobile, automotive, and embedded environments. Today, UFS is widely deployed and has become the successor to eMMC in most Android flagship smartphones. It also appears in some tablets, laptops, and […]

FreeBSD 15.0:Fixes and Features FreeBSD 15.0:Fixes and Features By John Baldwin The FreeBSD community continues to push forward with the release of 15.0. This release includes numerous features, refinements, and bugfixes relative to 14.0, which was released in November of 2023. Highlights of some of the changes are listed below, but more details can be […]

July/August/September Events Calendar 2025 Events Calendar By Anne Dickison BSD Events taking place through November 2025 Please send details of any FreeBSD related events or events that are of interest for FreeBSD users which are not listed here to freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. OpenZFS User and Developer Summit 2025 October 25-28, 2025 Portland, OR https://openzfs.org/wiki/OpenZFS_Developer_Summit_2025 This year, the […]

Foundation Letter Welcome to the third FreeBSD Journal issue of 2025! Summer has ended in the northern hemisphere, along with the resulting change in weather in many places. In the FreeBSD project, we are racing towards the finish line for 15.0 with the release scheduled near the end of the year. Our next issue will […]

We Get Letters We Get Letters By Michael W Lucas Greetings, Letters Columnist! Before you treat my letter like those IRS notices and fling it into /dev/null, please note that — if I timed this correctly — a delivery driver will be knocking on your door any minute now with a gallon of handmade gelato, […]

Conference Report: BSDCan 2025 Conference Report: BSDCan 2025 by Christos Margiolis This year, I gave a talk at BSDCan 2025 titled “Vox FreeBSD: How sound(4) works”. I arrived in Montréal on June 9, two days before the conference, but did not do much that day except rest. The next day, June 10, I took the […]

Embedded FreeBSD: Looking Back and Forward Embedded FreeBSD: Looking Back and Forward By Christopher R. Bowman We’ve covered quite a lot of ground over the last year. While I hazard to guess that most people run FreeBSD on conventional AMD64-based PCs, we examined one of the embedded boards that FreeBSD works on: the Digilent Arty […]

FreeBSD WiFi Development-Part 2: Working on a Driver FreeBSD WiFi Development Part 2: Working on a Driver By Tom Jones This is the second article in a series on hacking on WiFi in FreeBSD. In the first article, we introduced some terminology around WiFi/80211 networks, gave a crash course in a typical network architecture, and […]

Implementing a Quantum-Safe Website Implementing a Quantum-Safe Website By Gergely Poór Some time ago, at my current workplace, it was brought to my attention that traditional cryptography will no longer be considered secure. According to various sources, it is estimated that in the next 10 years, the advancements in quantum computing will reach a point […]

jones-bugs Writing Effective Bug Reports By Tom Jones A few years ago, our cherished former FreeBSD Journal editorial board member, Kristof Provost, wrote a great piece on the ideal way to write a bug report. Sadly, Michael W Lucas uses up our per-issue allotment of sarcasm early in the year, so to avoid going into […]

FreeBSD, Home Assistant, and rtl_433 FreeBSD, Home Assistant, and rtl_433 By Vanja Cvelbar A long time ago, I started playing with Home Assistant, and I’m very proud of a few automations. There is a motion sensor in the bathroom that turns on the light. If the sun has already set, the light turns on with […]

CHERIoT CHERIoT By David Chisnall The CHERI project has always had a close relationship with FreeBSD. It began from observing that Capsicum-based compartmentalization was great for new code but retrofitting it to existing libraries (with one process per library instance) was difficult for two reasons: First, libraries want to share complex data structures, which imposes […]

Starting Firewall Development: An Interview with Igor Ostapenko Starting FreeBSD Development An Interview with with Igor Ostapenko By Tom Jones TJ: There are numerous paths into working on FreeBSD, some through university courses and others through work experience. How did you learn about the project, and what initially drew you to Operating System development? IO: […]

Foundation Letter Welcome to the latest issue of the FreeBSD Journal! This time, we’re focusing on networking, not just the technology, but also the tools and improvements that help connect people and systems more easily and securely. In this issue, you’ll learn about Overlord, a fast and flexible way to deploy jails as you code. […]

April/May/June Events Calendar 2025 Events Calendar By Anne Dickison BSD Events taking place through November 2025 Please send details of any FreeBSD related events or events that are of interest for FreeBSD users which are not listed here to freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. EuroBSDCon 2025 September 25-28, 2025 Zagreb, Croatia https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/ This yearly conference gives the exceptional opportunity […]

We Get Letters We Get Letters By Michael W Lucas Dear Computer Touching Advice Columnist, FreeBSD’s jails have a few different ways to network. How do I decide which to use? —Baffled and Distressed Dear BAD, I’m writing this at BSDCan 2025. Two stories above us, someone is using a hammer drill. Traversing the concrete […]