FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE, NetBSD 9.5 release, cheap OpenBSD VPS and more
Releases
FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE Available: The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team officially announced the general availability of FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE, making installation images and binary packages available across supported architectures. The announcement highlights key system updates and software upgrades while directing administrators to consult the release notes and errata prior to installation.
NetBSD 9.5 released and EOL for netbsd-9: The blog post announces the release of NetBSD 9.5, the fifth and final update to the NetBSD 9 stable branch that includes essential security and stability fixes. This release also marks the official end-of-life for the entire NetBSD-9 branch, urging remaining users to upgrade to more recent versions like NetBSD 11.0 or 10.2.
BSDSec
ekkoBSD 2.1 now available: The ekkoBSD project has announced the release of ekkoBSD 2.1, its first public release since the original 2003–2004 project era. ekkoBSD is a complete BSD-family operating system developed as an integrated kernel, boot chain, userland, installer, package manager, shell and documentation set.
Version 2.1 supports amd64 systems with BIOS and 64-bit UEFI boot. It ships the Rust-based Einstein installer, the signed MOM package manager and repository, and ESH as the default shell. Both the full and minimal optical images support offline installation; the minimal image carries the exact signed closure for a working base system. The release also provides a UEFI USB image, a BIOS PXE bundle, offline package media, signed checksums and public source. The initial amd64 MOM repository contains 747 packages.
Release announcement: https://ekkobsd.org/
Download: https://cdn.ekkobsd.org/pub/ekkoBSD/releases/2.1/amd64/
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News
Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Testing Compat Linux: Syscall testing, part 2: This Google Summer of Code 2026 report details efforts to test NetBSD’s compat_linux kernel translation layer using the Linux Test Project (LTP) test suite to evaluate Linux system call compatibility. Author Henrique Brito outlines key achievements, including establishing build dependencies, creating a pkgsrc package to automate test execution, and documenting syscall test results for future fixes.
Valuable News – 2026/09/07: Weekly roundup of technical guides, system administration tutorials, and community updates from across the FreeBSD and UNIX ecosystems.
FreeBSD Basics - the system shell (/bin/sh): Third part of a video tutorial.
FreeBSD Basics - the system shell (/bin/sh): Second part of a video tutorial.
FreeBSD’s Release Cycle: What It Means for Your Upgrade Schedule: Explains FreeBSD’s CURRENT, STABLE, and RELEASE branches, the published release schedule, and support timelines, showing how to plan upgrades and stay on supported versions.
Tutorials
OpenBSD VPS for $5 a Year: A guide to deploying an OpenBSD VPS on TierHive, a NAT VPS provider offering supported OpenBSD images for under $5 per year. It covers setting up a 512 MB instance, SSH keys, and routing domain traffic with SSL using TierHive’s built-in HAProxy service.
NetBSD 11 from scratch: In this post author will cover the installation process of the NetBSD operating system, including disk level encryption. Instead of using the standard installation program (sysinst), they decided to install NetBSD “from scratch”, as a way to dive into the internals, and learn more about the nuts and bolts of this great operating system.
Overview of AOOSTAR WTR Pro on *BSD: Finding a NAS that provides NVMe and SATA storage while being tiny enough to sit in 10” rack, have a CPU that’s not hogging, use a small amount of watts and offers usage of a non-proprietary OS is not simple. Especially when you have the “must run any BSD” to the equation. But here we are, the AOOSTAR WTR Pro Ryzen edition meets all the prerequisites.
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