F
Florine Kamdem
Guest
Original article here.
Consider this when replying.
As a third-year computer science student and the BOFH of The :wheel Group—an operating-systems student club at my university—I’ve always kept an eye on BSD systems but never quite found the time to explore them.
One day, while scrolling through my Fediverse feed, I came across the FreeBSD Foundation’s Mastodon toot announcing that the travel-grant deadline was approaching. On a whim, I applied—figuring it would be a great opportunity to learn and bring new insights back to my student club. You can imagine my surprise when I found out my application had been approved!
I arrived a day early and spent time wandering through Zagreb’s old town. Since my hostel was nearby and the evening was still young, I also stopped by the conference venue for a quick look.
Although the first day was reserved for the FreeBSD Developer Summit, I showed up hoping to lend a hand to the organizers and maybe meet some attendees in advance. While no extra help was needed, I asked if it might be possible to sit in—and to my delight, I was introduced to Ed Maste, who kindly allowed me to attend.
The opening session—led by Benedict Reuschling—included a lively icebreaker where attendees arranged themselves according to different criteria, such as how many conferences they’d attended or how far they’d traveled to Zagreb. It was a fun way to connect with people right away. Afterward, I spoke with Benedict, who expressed interest in giving a guest lecture at my university.
The technical sessions were equally engaging. Greg Wallace’s Learnings from the FreeBSD Enterprise Working Group shed light on enterprise-adoption challenges, while Brooks Davis’s talk on the CHERI security architecture was particularly fascinating. Ed Maste’s update on Foundation projects introduced me to Grimoire and Sylve, and Sven Ruediger and Lukas Engelhardt’s presentation on pkgbase explained how FreeBSD’s new upgrade mechanism replaces the traditional freebsd-update(8).
That evening, I joined a group of developers for dinner at a local restaurant, enjoying both great food and great conversation about FreeBSD and open-source development.
On the second and third days, I attended Kirk McKusick’s legendary workshops on FreeBSD internals. As one of BSD’s principal authors, Kirk shared not only deep technical knowledge but also stories that made the sessions lively and accessible. I came away with a clearer understanding of FreeBSD’s kernel structure, process management, security subsystems, virtual-memory implementation, I/O and device interfaces, file systems, and networking stack.
Each evening, I met more developers and exchanged ideas about potential lectures and workshops for my student club.
The main conference opened the following day. Jan Bramkamp’s Fast FreeBSD Jail Provisioning on ZFS demonstrated sub-second jail deployment using clever ZFS-dataset techniques—a highlight for me. I also enjoyed Hans-Jörg Höxer’s Confidential Computing with OpenBSD, which explored AMD’s SEV/SEV-ES virtualization extensions, and Roller Angel’s session on Ansible/Salt automation, which sparked several project ideas.
At the evening social, I even packaged Benjamin Stürz’s fuse-ufs driver
for Gentoo Linux and had another wonderful chat with Kirk and Eric.
The final day began with Kirk McKusick’s talk, The History of the BSD Daemon, filled with fascinating anecdotes about the mascot’s evolution. Patrick M. Hausen followed with insights on deploying FreeBSD on Hetzner servers—an area that closely matches my interests. Most inspiring of all was Jake Freeland’s presentation on Capsicum, which convinced me to focus my bachelor’s thesis on FreeBSD.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring my trip to EuroBSDCon in Zagreb. The experience far exceeded my expectations—educational, inspiring, and filled with genuine community warmth.
This was my first BSD conference, but certainly not my last.
Looking ahead, I plan to introduce FreeBSD to my university through lectures and workshops with The :wheel Group, integrate it into my own workflows, and contribute back to the project as part of my ongoing studies and future career.
Respectfully,
Leah Budzicka
The post 2025 EuroBSDCon Trip Report – Leah Budzicka first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.
Continue reading...
Consider this when replying.
As a third-year computer science student and the BOFH of The :wheel Group—an operating-systems student club at my university—I’ve always kept an eye on BSD systems but never quite found the time to explore them.
One day, while scrolling through my Fediverse feed, I came across the FreeBSD Foundation’s Mastodon toot announcing that the travel-grant deadline was approaching. On a whim, I applied—figuring it would be a great opportunity to learn and bring new insights back to my student club. You can imagine my surprise when I found out my application had been approved!
I arrived a day early and spent time wandering through Zagreb’s old town. Since my hostel was nearby and the evening was still young, I also stopped by the conference venue for a quick look.
Although the first day was reserved for the FreeBSD Developer Summit, I showed up hoping to lend a hand to the organizers and maybe meet some attendees in advance. While no extra help was needed, I asked if it might be possible to sit in—and to my delight, I was introduced to Ed Maste, who kindly allowed me to attend.
The opening session—led by Benedict Reuschling—included a lively icebreaker where attendees arranged themselves according to different criteria, such as how many conferences they’d attended or how far they’d traveled to Zagreb. It was a fun way to connect with people right away. Afterward, I spoke with Benedict, who expressed interest in giving a guest lecture at my university.
The technical sessions were equally engaging. Greg Wallace’s Learnings from the FreeBSD Enterprise Working Group shed light on enterprise-adoption challenges, while Brooks Davis’s talk on the CHERI security architecture was particularly fascinating. Ed Maste’s update on Foundation projects introduced me to Grimoire and Sylve, and Sven Ruediger and Lukas Engelhardt’s presentation on pkgbase explained how FreeBSD’s new upgrade mechanism replaces the traditional freebsd-update(8).
That evening, I joined a group of developers for dinner at a local restaurant, enjoying both great food and great conversation about FreeBSD and open-source development.
On the second and third days, I attended Kirk McKusick’s legendary workshops on FreeBSD internals. As one of BSD’s principal authors, Kirk shared not only deep technical knowledge but also stories that made the sessions lively and accessible. I came away with a clearer understanding of FreeBSD’s kernel structure, process management, security subsystems, virtual-memory implementation, I/O and device interfaces, file systems, and networking stack.
Each evening, I met more developers and exchanged ideas about potential lectures and workshops for my student club.
The main conference opened the following day. Jan Bramkamp’s Fast FreeBSD Jail Provisioning on ZFS demonstrated sub-second jail deployment using clever ZFS-dataset techniques—a highlight for me. I also enjoyed Hans-Jörg Höxer’s Confidential Computing with OpenBSD, which explored AMD’s SEV/SEV-ES virtualization extensions, and Roller Angel’s session on Ansible/Salt automation, which sparked several project ideas.
At the evening social, I even packaged Benjamin Stürz’s fuse-ufs driver
for Gentoo Linux and had another wonderful chat with Kirk and Eric.
The final day began with Kirk McKusick’s talk, The History of the BSD Daemon, filled with fascinating anecdotes about the mascot’s evolution. Patrick M. Hausen followed with insights on deploying FreeBSD on Hetzner servers—an area that closely matches my interests. Most inspiring of all was Jake Freeland’s presentation on Capsicum, which convinced me to focus my bachelor’s thesis on FreeBSD.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to the FreeBSD Foundation for sponsoring my trip to EuroBSDCon in Zagreb. The experience far exceeded my expectations—educational, inspiring, and filled with genuine community warmth.
This was my first BSD conference, but certainly not my last.
Looking ahead, I plan to introduce FreeBSD to my university through lectures and workshops with The :wheel Group, integrate it into my own workflows, and contribute back to the project as part of my ongoing studies and future career.
Respectfully,
Leah Budzicka
The post 2025 EuroBSDCon Trip Report – Leah Budzicka first appeared on FreeBSD Foundation.
Continue reading...