Letter from the Foundation

Welcome to the July/August edition of the FreeBSD Journal! As I write this, summer is drawing to a close, and we’re transitioning into the fall season. Since my last letter, FreeBSD has welcomed a new core team, and version 14.1 has been officially released. Our release engineer, Colin Percival, has also shared a schedule for upcoming releases, with 13.4 nearing completion and 14.2 expected by the end of the year. In May, during BSDCan, the Journal’s editorial board gathered to plan our issues for the coming year. We are thrilled by the vibrant activity within the FreeBSD community and the compelling stories we’re privileged to bring you in these pages.

This issue’s theme is Storage on FreeBSD. Jason Tubnor and I kick things off with introductions to two network block storage protocols supported by FreeBSD: iSCSI and NVMe over Fabrics. Roller Angel then takes us through ZFS native encryption, exploring how it ensures data security. And in this issue’s columns, Christopher Bowman continues his series with insights on using FreeBSD in embedded environments, while Randall Stewart and Michael Tüxen break down TCP LRO. Benedict Reuschling explains how to use Samba for Time Machine backups, and Michael Lucas provides his usual entertaining commentary.

On the conference front, Aymeric Wibo shares his experience at BSDCan 2024. Looking ahead, EuroBSDCon 2024 is just a couple of weeks away in Dublin, Ireland, and the FreeBSD Fall Summit will be held at NetApp’s campus in San Jose, California, in November. Members of the editorial board will be attending both events, and we always welcome the opportunity to chat.

We love hearing from readers. If you have feedback, article suggestions, or are interested in contributing, please reach out to us at info@freebsdjournal.com.

John Baldwin
Chair of the FreeBSD Journal Editorial Board