Notices by Stefano Marinelli (stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe)

First rule of Fediverse administration: no matter how many you suspend, Nicole's (the Fediverse Chick) accounts will multiply like Gremlins.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #MastoAdmin

@gabe_saltar @lcruggeri @as400 @justine I'm replying to everyone with a single message:
My "daily drivers" are mainly two: a desktop running FreeBSD (with Plasma and XFCE – fully supported, Nvidia GPU – suspend and resume work perfectly, and have for years), and a laptop (now over three years old) from Apple running macOS.
I don't think this choice is inconsistent: I manage hundreds of servers (and thousands of jails) and I use a workstation daily. The balance still heavily leans towards BSD (but also Linux).

I'd also add that my workstation is essentially a “dumb” machine – everything I use is mostly a terminal and a web browser. With Firefox Sync, I don’t need to worry about keeping history, bookmarks, etc., in sync any other way. With Vaultwarden, my passwords are synced everywhere. Files are synced via Nextcloud.

In other words, for me, switching workstations is trivial – ironically, I think I could even use a Chromebook (never tried one, but just to make the point). Often, I just use Apache Guacamole to login into my RDP jail and, there, I find all the things I need to work: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2023/12/13/how-to-create-a-freebsd-jail-hosting-xrdp-and-xfce-remote-access-desktop/

What does matter to me are: effective, instant, and reliable suspend and resume; a good monitor (which becomes increasingly important as the years go by); if possible, decent built-in speakers (I sometimes listen to music while working); good battery life; and zero surprises when I’m on the move. No surprises during online calls either – so working webcam, etc.

As of today (or rather, when I bought my latest laptop), macOS was the best compromise – even though it's closed source – that came closest to what I needed. FreeBSD is catching up, and I'm holding off on buying a new laptop because I want one that supports it perfectly.
I still remember the days of using ndiswrapper on Linux, so I'm not afraid of tweaking things to get them working.

A small personal note: I’ve always thought you can’t judge an OS based only on how it runs on your personal machine. My data lives on my servers, and that’s where I use BSDs exclusively – or, when that’s not possible, Linux. 🙂

Two weeks ago, today.

#ThrowbackThursday #FensterFreitag #WindowFriday #Italy #Florence #Italia #Firenze #Photography

@silverwizard thanks!

Ok, fixed the issue with code rendering: Markdown.pl doesn't support ```so I had to implement a workaround, but it's ok now.
The example page is now showing the themes in a correct way: https://bssg.dragas.net/example

Dear friends of the BSD Cafe,
I'm thrilled to announce that we’ll soon be switching domains and fully dedicating ourselves to Windows and closed-source software. We just love licenses and handing over our data to others — LLM engines included!
Welcome to the Windows Café!

(Obviously… April Fools!)

After the article from The Atlantic, I've seen a lot of misinformation circulating among journalists. I'm not getting into the political side of things, but many are focusing on the fact that Signal was used, claiming it's "not encrypted" or "not secure." This really saddens me because it spreads the wrong message.

#Signal #Privacy #Security #Encryption #Misinformation #TechNews #Journalism

In the countryside, there are rituals that have endured for hundreds of years, unchanged.
This elderly woman, her body bent by time and hard work, walks each day to meet her chickens - who roam freely across a vast open space.
She gathers a few branches and leaves, then returns to fetch the food she’ll give them, to complement what they’ve already foraged in nature.

The chickens, friendly and orderly, follow her all the while.
And watching them, I’m reminded of people who are no longer here - people who were part of my life for a long time, who lived those same rituals, even if hundreds of kilometers away.

Even as everything around us changes, there are places that never do.

#Photography #PhotoMonday #FotoMontag #MonochromeMonday #Countryside #Time

In less than 2 hours, I created and put in production 3 new FreeBSD servers - each one with haproxy, nginx, mariadb, etc. - backups and monitorings included.

I created a set of jails then cloned them. Then customised them.

Those setups will run for *years* with some updates as they're meant to be stable and reliable.

Now, I can have another coffee and relax for some minutes 🙂

#FreeBSD #RunBSD

@stu Let me think. The first Linux server I exposed was in 2001. Fun Fact: my ISP used to truncate the connection if the traffic was low. My friend Simone ( @henomis - do you remember?) and I were supposed to take a university exam, and we had decided, as a practical demonstration, to do it by showing a real remote connection. Simone had written a rlogin daemon from scratch - as a project for the exam - and we wanted to demonstrate how we could connect from the university to my server at my parents' house (hundreds of kms away) and that it would work. So, I launched Napster just to keep the connection active, generating traffic. The professor was amazed and excited by our "alternative" approach.

I believe the first exposed FreeBSD server was around the end of 2002 or early 2003. But the first exposed server I did "professionally" (i.e., to host services for clients) was shortly after, probably at the end of 2003, and it was based on NetBSD.

Italian Breakfast

#Italy #Breakfast #Food

@justine sweets for breakfast is typical in Italy (and at least in part of France). I've been doing a sweet breakfast for years - now switched to different things to contain the weight 🙂

Now that it's official, I can announce it - although I may have dropped a few hints earlier! 😉

My talk "Why (and how) we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs" has been accepted, and I’ll be honored to present it in June at BSDCan in Ottawa.

The joy of meeting BSD friends in person again (and those I haven’t had the chance to meet live yet) will be immense, and the honor of sharing my story in Canada is truly beyond measure, especially considering the level of other talks and all the people attending.

Of course, I’ll be bringing various BSD Cafe gadgets with me!

For more information, here’s @mwl 's post with further details: https://blog.bsdcan.org/2025/03/18/bsdcan-2025-talks-tutorials-and-registration/

#BSDCan #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD

Thank you, Nature. For everything.

#Photography #Photo #Flowers #SpringIsComing #ThankYouTuesday #Nature #Italy

I was thinking about how it was possible to stop using a gem like HAProxy for so long. It used to be my go-to choice, but then I switched to using Nginx for everything, and I almost forgot about it.
Well, it’s great to reconnect with old friends!

#HAProxy #Nginx #SysAdmin

"Goodbye, Fediverse Chick!"

This is a nice addition to #Mitra

https://mitra.social/objects/01959b84-3160-ee50-662e-2cb2cc68e10a

@mitra

#Fediverse

Wello!

#Caturday #Cat #Cats

Just saved by a zfs snapshot. Again.
Thank you, ZFS

#ZFS #OpenZFS #FreeBSD

These days, I decided to renew the company website. I wanted it to be more modern and better aligned with the message I want to convey, as well as with our use of the BSDs. I’ve worked on it a bit – it’s still incomplete, but I decided to put it online since it’s already better than the previous version.

I’ll continue working on it, bit by bit, in the coming days to fix other things and add some content.
Of course, no CMS, just HTML, with a focus on usability even if browsed without images and JavaScript.

https://prodottoinrete.it

#RunBSD

The threat of shutting down Starlink to Ukraine is one of the best advertisements for #OwnYourData - that I've been advocating for many, many years. Geopolitical and commercial changes can be unpredictable and sudden.

Some clients are finally deciding to move to infrastructures under their control (even if not in their offices, and in many cases, I can agree).
So here's the suitable soundtrack.

https://song.link/s/1CKvinIoExZec5pv8OHtzU

#MondayMood #Soundtrack #Music #MastoMusic #MastoRadio #FediMusic #FediRadio #JukeBox