BSD Cafe Billboard

Dear friends of the BSD Cafe,
One of the principles this place was built on has always been free communication. Whether on the Fediverse or on Matrix, the goal is the same: open, secure, private, decentralized tools. Because we know, from experience, that anything centralized will sooner or later come to an end.
Matrix is great, and we like it. But it's tied to its server - you can't migrate away (easily). It does its job well, yet sometimes it asks for more than a conversation should: heavy to host, hard to leave.
So when my friend @outofcreativity@exquisite.social brought it up again at EuroBSDCon, I decided to give Delta Chat another try after many years. And yes - its philosophy fits mine, and the Cafe’s, well.

For a few months we ran a relay - a chatmail server - but it was on Debian, and I didn't want to make an official service that runs on Debian. Not because it doesn't work: it works perfectly. But because it wouldn't be in the spirit of this place.

Thanks to @feld@friedcheese.us 's excellent cookbook recipe, I also kept a private relay of my own running for months, just to test it. It held up beautifully. So yesterday, with the help of some friends in the cookbook chat, I migrated the Debian server to FreeBSD - accounts and data included - and I can finally call it a stable, official Cafe service.

Our chatmail relay - https://chatmail.bsd.cafe - runs on FreeBSD, in a jail. Which means it gets everything the other services get: hourly backups via zfs send and receive, FreeBSD's security, and all the rest.

I'd encourage everyone to try Delta Chat. Secure, decentralized communication built on protocols we already know and trust: the ones behind email. And the development is moving fast. Multi-relay is no longer a promise - it's here, and it's solid: a single profile can use several relays at once, so your account and your reachability survive even if one of them goes down and disappears. That's real resilience. The real decentralization, the one we love.

Because Signal is great. But Signal, too, is centralized. And we happen to like the true spirit of the Internet.

Grab a drink, take a seat, and relax.

This is the off-topic corner of the BSD Cafe Billboard.

Introductions, random thoughts, tech tangents, music recommendations, photography, mechanical keyboards, or whatever else is on your mind - it all belongs here.

The only rule: be kind to each other.
We're pro, not against. Supporters, not haters. Builders, not destroyers.

The Lounge is meant to feel like the best part of a conference - the hallway track, the dinner after the talks, the conversation that starts with "so what do you actually run at home?"

Say hi. We'd love to know who's sitting at the table.

Some of us started on machines where 640K was more than enough.

This is the space for vintage hardware, classic operating systems, old-school Unix, CP/M, Amiga, Commodore, early PCs, and anything that makes you feel nostalgic - or curious about how we got here.

Show off your collection, share a restoration project, ask for help getting that old VAX to boot, or just tell us about the first computer you ever touched.

Old hardware never dies. It just waits for someone who still cares.

Where the sun never sets on open-source Unix.

illumos carries forward the legacy of OpenSolaris with technologies that the rest of the world is still catching up to: ZFS, DTrace, Zones, and Crossbow networking.

Whether you're running a home lab or a production environment, this is where you'll find fellow illumos enthusiasts.

Pick your distribution below, or post here for general illumos discussion, kernel topics, and cross-distribution questions.

A new section just appeared on the Billboard.

Some of us got into this world through a Commodore 64, a 386, an Amiga, or a terminal that weighed more than we did. Those machines deserve a corner of their own.

RetroComputing is now open - for vintage hardware, classic operating systems, restoration projects, and the stories behind the machines that made us who we are.

Head over, introduce your oldest working machine, and let's see what's still running out there.

This is where the BSD Cafe staff shares news, updates, service changes, and important notices about our community and infrastructure.

If you want to stay in the loop about what's happening behind the counter, you're in the right place.

Keep an eye on this category - we'll post here whenever something changes, breaks, gets fixed, or gets launched.

Discussion is welcome: if you have questions about an announcement, just reply here. For general chat, head over to the BSD Cafe Lounge.

A guide on how to set up LibreNMS inside a FreeBSD jail.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2026/05/07/monitor-your-services-with-librenms-on-freebsd/

The #BSDCafe #Billboard instance has been updated to #NodeBB v4.10.2.

#BSDCafe #BSDCafeUpdates #BSDCafeAnnouncements

Yes, there's a Linux section at the BSD Cafe. We are inclusive!

Many of us work with Linux alongside BSD in production, at home, or both.

This is the place to discuss Linux distributions, tools, kernel news, or anything Linux-related - especially if you're coming from Linux and curious about BSD, or running both.

The coffee is the same, the conversation is good, and the door is always open.

The Billboard just got a hallway track.

We've added a Conferences section with dedicated subcategories for the three major BSD conferences: EuroBSDCon, BSDCan, and AsiaBSDCon.

Whether you're preparing a talk proposal, looking for travel tips, writing a trip report, or trying to figure out who's going this year - now there's a place for that conversation to live longer than a Fediverse thread.

More conferences may be added over time based on community interest. If you think something is missing, let us know.

@kbm0@mastodon.social because it's using proven, reliable and decentralised technologies instead of creating a new, written in rust (but with memory safe constraints disable for easy vibe coded development) platform

Zones. ZFS. bhye. KVM. The cloud's best-kept secret.

SmartOS brings the full power of illumos to hypervisor and container workloads. Discuss installations, vmadm, imgadm, Triton, or just share how you're using SmartOS to quietly run circles around the competition.

Secure by default, no compromises.

Discuss anything related to OpenBSD here: pf, pledge, unveil, httpd, relayd, installations, hardware support, or just why you chose OpenBSD and never looked back.

Whether you run it as your daily driver or as the silent guardian of your network, this is your table.

@kbm0@mastodon.social the server part is just a postfix, opendkim, dovecot and some helper applications, so quite lightweight.

HAMMER time.

This is the home for all things DragonflyBSD: HAMMER2, virtual kernels, performance tuning, and the unique design choices that set DragonflyBSD apart.

A smaller community, but that makes every conversation count.

Welcome!

Good idea. I've just created it!

The community-driven continuation of the OpenSolaris vision.

Discuss OpenIndiana installations, packaging (IPS), desktop experience, or anything related to keeping the Solaris heritage alive and well in the open-source world.

I'm pinning this post, thank you!

@Tionisla Welcome!!!

Welcome to the main BSD discussion area of the Billboard.

Whether you run FreeBSD on production servers, OpenBSD on your firewall, NetBSD on that old SPARC in the closet, or DragonflyBSD because you love HAMMER - this is your space.

Pick the subcategory that matches your flavor, or post here for cross-BSD topics: comparisons, migrations, general questions, or anything that doesn't fit neatly under a single project.

No question is too basic, no setup is too weird. Pull up a chair.