At Akademy 2025 this year, I had the privilege of giving a talk about a big picture topic close to my heart, and you can watch it here: For those who prefer reading over watching and listening, I’ll give a quick summary: I believe that the challenges facing the world today present an opportunity for […]
Talk at Akademy 2025 — minding the big picture: opportunity from chaos
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OpenZFS continues to evolve as a robust filesystem for everything from IoT devices to supercomputing clusters. The upcoming OpenZFS 2.4 release (Nov 2025) focuses on stability, usability, and performance.
Key Features in 2.4
- Fast dedup log pacing
- Fix for Encryption + ZFS send
- Skip slow RAID-Z children
- Improved allocation under fragmentation
- Scrub only changed blocks in a date range
- Parallel ARC eviction for large-memory systems
- Asynchronous ARC flush on pool export
- New JSON output,
zfs rewritecommand, project quotas on FreeBSD, ZVOL threading, and more
In-Development Features
- Label Redesign: Larger (256 MiB) labels, more uberblocks, support for larger sector sizes, better rewind and diagnostics.
- AnyRaid-Z: Flexible RAID-Z with mixed disk sizes for higher usable capacity.
- Forced Export: Allows safe forced unmount of suspended pools to restore uptime.
- AWS Enhancements: Optimized write strategies for provisioned IOPS EBS volumes.
Potential Features
- BRT Log: Improves performance of block cloning/reflinks.
- SMR Drive Support: Optimizations to handle overlapping track designs.
Future Technologies
- NVMe-connected HDDs: Standardized interfaces for reconfigurable storage.
- CXL (Compute Express Link): Disaggregated computing and memory pooling to scale ZFS without distributed FS complexity.
https://klarasystems.com/articles/zfs-new-features-roadmap-innovations/
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FreeBSD 15.0 Alpha 3 Highlights
- Release Status
- Third of four planned alpha releases.
- Stable release expected in December.
- Branching in the development tree set for early October.
- Key Improvements
- WiFi drivers: Ongoing updates, including LinuxKPI and other wireless driver work.
- Better laptop support: Enhancements in WiFi, power management, and desktop usability.
- Desktop experience: KDE option added to installer.
- Other Updates
- pkgbase fixes: Improvements to release image building and installation.
- Package updates: Includes
unboundandbc.
- Outlook
- WiFi support improving but still behind Windows, Linux, and macOS.
- Reproducible builds and broader hardware support make 15.0 a major update.
- Release Status
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Context
- Git 2.49 introduced a Rust foreign function interface.
- Currently, Rust support is optional in Git builds.
- RFC Proposal by Patrick Steinhardt
- Introduce Rust into Git’s core as a test balloon.
- Objectives:
- Allow experimentation and set up build infrastructure.
- Give distributors time to adapt to Rust toolchain needs.
- Signal that Git 3.0 will mandate Rust in the build system.
- Concerns
- Mandatory Rust may restrict platform and architecture support compared to C-only builds.
- Additional Note
- Git 3.0 is also planned to switch to SHA-256 as default.
- Status
- Discussion is ongoing on the Git mailing list.
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Patch Update: Linux kernel gains support for detecting FreeBSD’s Bhyve hypervisor.
Reason: Needed to enable 15-bit MSI (Message Signaled Interrupts) for handling >255 vCPUs.
Background:
- Previously, Bhyve detection was only cosmetic (boot message).
- Now functional due to FreeBSD 15.0’s new 15-bit MSI enlightenment.
Timeline:
- Patch added to the
x86/cpubranch oftip.git. - Expected inclusion in Linux 6.18 merge window.
- FreeBSD 15.0 and Linux 6.18 stable releases both expected in December.
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I can not unfortunately test the beta as I can not even login after reboot. Typing my credentials lead to a new loop of password prompt.
KDE Plasma 6.5 Beta Highlights
- Release Timeline
- Beta released: Thursday
- Stable release expected: 21 October
- New Features
- KNightTime: Schedules dark/light cycles and adjusts screen color temperature by time of day.
- Rounded Bottom Corners: Default window design update.
- GPU Underlays: Resolves a 22-year-old feature request.
- Wayland Enhancements: Picture-in-picture, pointer warping, and more.
- Improved Functionality
- Configurable tablet dials and touch rings in Plasma settings.
- Enhanced Sticky Notes usability when placed in a panel.
- Clipboard entries can now be marked as favorites that will be permanently saved for easy access in the future.
- Availability
- Beta downloads and details available via KDE.org.
https://blogs.kde.org/2025/09/20/this-week-in-plasma-6.5-beta-and-start-of-the-bug-fix-a-palooza/
- Release Timeline
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New in the FreeBSD Foundation Shop!
We’ve added fresh gear to help you show your support for FreeBSD:
-Foam Trucker Hat (Embroidery)
-Mouse Pad (Rectangle)
-Spiral Notebook
-Accent Coffee Mug
Every purchase supports the FreeBSD Foundation’s mission, funding development, advocacy, and community initiatives that keep FreeBSD strong.
Take a look at the new arrivals here:
👉 https://freebsd-foundation.myshopify.com/
#FreeBSD #OpenSource #Community #SupportFreeBSD
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What’s Changed
- Fix custom colors not saving by @iamllama in #4326
- Decode images asynchronously during review. Please let us know if images in the review screen load faster or slower for you. By @abdnh in #4320
- Prevent clipping for QPushButton:default:hover by @jcznk in #4323
- Updated Dockerfile to use Ninja build system by @e-hamrin in #4321
- Fix/Add lower review limit to health check. by @Luc-Mcgrady in #4334
- Make timebox message translatable with flexible variable order by @snowtimeglass in #4338
- (UI polish) Improved margins in Card Browser’s “Previewer” by @jcznk in #4337
/root 