Freebsd-src Alternatives

freebsd-src reviews and mentions

• OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jul 2026

  Just as another point of comparison, FreeBSD's version seems somewhere in-between. It also enables a Capsicum sandbox before processing any data, akin to what the OpenBSD version does with pledge.

  [1] https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.bin/yes...

• Show HN: GentleOS – A pair of hobby OSes for vintage 32-bit and 16-bit PCs
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Jun 2026

  Thanks, so glad people like the code! I keep looking for ways to make it simpler and more obvious.

  > - noticed krn_main() ends with `while (1);` [1]. I would've expected a "schedule" call or something. I assume there's no real busy loop burning CPU, maybe it's never meant to reach this code?

  Yeah, `gui_main()` takes over and is not supposed to return, so the code is unreachable. The loop is just an old idiom used in such places (e.g. [1]), though I've now replaced it with a comment and a call to `halt()` to better convey the intention.

  > - I'm reminded of the "bare metal OS" when I see one of the apps call `krn_*` functions directly [2].

  Yeah... but at least the kernel doesn't call the apps... which it could ;^)

  [1] https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/sys/x86/x86...

• Number in man page titles e.g. sleep(3)
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Apr 2026
• Debian 13 "Trixie"
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Aug 2025

  > For this reason, it's a good idea to encourage users to use /tmp for all files they need only a short while.

  skulker is not in the old comp.unix.aix Usenet FAQ document, but given the number of times "That's what skulker does, and you should be running it daily." seems to have been the answer over the years, it probably should have been. (-:

  To old hands, this is not a systemd novelty at all. The novelty, to old hands, is the idea of doing this not using a script. I remember the war stories from the 1990s and turn of the 21st century when users did things like include LF in the names of temporary files, and administrators suddenly learned the utility of find -print0 and xargs -0 or find -exec rm {} +. Stéphane Chazelas for one has had a lot to say on the subject over the years.

  That said, mtree (from 1989) already existed at the point that systemd-tmpfiles was invented, and already had the idea of working from a specification file with names and owners and permissions and whatnot. It is surprising that no-one ever apparently tried mtree for completely wiping /tmp. The BSDs are using find to this day in the several places with they auto-delete stuff in /tmp including the daily periodic, although they did spot that their own find had a -delete option in 1999. (-: Hell, even I am still using find.

  https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.sbin/pe...

• Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Jul 2025

  > OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much

  FreeBSD did it in 2012 (for the 2014 release of 10.0?):

  * https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/8f77be2b4ce5e3...

  And has compat layers going back many releases:

  * https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat4x/

  * https://wiki.freebsd.org/BinaryCompatibility

  So newly (re-)compiled programs can take advantage of newer features, but old binaries continue to work.

• Stdio(3) change: FILE is now opaque (OpenBSD)
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Jul 2025
• 'I happened to be sitting next to Bill Joy at UCB when he wrote the first "yes"'
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Jun 2025
• Implementing a Struct of Arrays
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 May 2025

  They might think that they don't need metaprograming, but like everyone else, they eventually do.

  That's how we get monstrosities like https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/master/sys/sys/q... (plenty of Linux equivalents --- e.g. the tracepoint stuff)

  Better to use a language with thoughtful metaprogramming than tack it on badly later.

• NetBSD on a JavaStation
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Mar 2025

  Bootloader developers used to be particularly fond of Forth.

  For many years, FreeBSD's 3rd-stage loader used FICL (Forth Inspired Command Language) for scripting [1]. It's still supported, although in the recent years it was deprecated in favor of Lua [2].

  [1] https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/stand/forth

• Bzip3: A better and stronger spiritual successor to BZip2
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Feb 2025
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