Thomas Adam @thomasadam@bsd.network

All our hosted Git repository servers have been updated to today's new 0.122 release of the Git-compatible #gameoftrees version control system.

This update brings fixes and tweaks for the web frontend. In particular, #OpenSSH host key fingerprints are now prominently displayed where it matters, encouraging users to verify host keys instead of trusting them blindly on first use. See the Game of Trees change log for details: https://gameoftrees.org/releases/changes.html#2026-02-10

We anticipate upcoming support for SHA256 object-format Git repositories, hopefully in the next release (as per https://bsd.network/@op/116030524380288866)

By the way, we still have spare room for more hosted VMs. If you want some no-nonsense, community-driven, minimal #git repository and static website hosting in your life then find us at https://gothub.org/

Our service runs #OpenBSD exclusively but no expertise in BSD is required at all to make use of it. Repositories, user accounts, access rules, commit notifications, and web hosting can be managed by editing a plain-text configuration file stored in a Git repository.

Today's new release of the #gameoftrees version control system finally makes it possible to have a #git repository web frontend on the Game of Trees Hub, including the ability to serve static web sites directly out of hosted repositories.

We are in the process of upgrading all user VMs to make these new features available.

Watch the (upcoming in one hour) #fosdem presentation by @op in the BSD devroom to learn more about how our web server implementation works: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/K7YXFT-gotweb/

@thomasadam "caterwauling" is howling/wailing/yowling like a cat, when the're… well, when they're cats. So generally an unpleasant noise or sensation.

"Kater" i.e. tomcat is hangover in German, so this is doubling down a bit.

"catcall" is more recent and seems to be exclusively focused on the horny side of cats, I'd say.

Last time I heard the word was from Black Book's Fran Katzenjammer, and of course the Americans have their Katzenjammer Kids.

https://only-fans.neocities.org/

@thomasadam I love how they keep misspelling XFree86 as "X-386". X386 according to Wikipedia lasted about a year, first released in 1991 and became the basis of Xi Graphics' Accelerated-X. XFree86 sprang up from X386 code in 1992 and from what I can see, "replaced" X386.

That project fell apart because of a license change that the developers did not like (my recollection is hazy, but Wikipedia says it happened in 2004 and was because the new license was GPL-incompatible), so X.org forked from the very last commit before said license change, and work carried on from there. XFree86 withered and died.

I digress though…

That thread seems to be showing all the arrogance of the modern UI designers who seem to think being able to differentiate a pushbutton from plain text is old hat. (…and I'm sooo tired of scroll-bar peek-a-boo!) I've tried various Wayland environments on numerous occasions, but there are places where Wayland just isn't ready.

A big contributor to this is the fact that pretty much everything relies on co-operation with the compositor, and all the compositors have their own way of doing things. x11vnc for example just connects to the X server and allows you to expose any X11 desktop you have the credentials for, be it Gnome/KDE or any WM. wayvnc won't work unless you have a wlroots-based desktop (which means not KDE or Gnome).

On-screen keyboard support is a crapshoot too: I have a keyboard-less tablet computer that I have tried various Wayland desktops, and the inability to bring up a fully-featured on-screen keyboard is crippling. Best I've been able to do is a crappy iOS-like OSK with no Control, Alternate or function keys … and punctuation on a separate "layer" so I feel like I'm punching data in via a ITA-2 teletype. Totally buggers my password muscle memory!

Screenreaders I hear have big problems with keybindings… because once again the compositor is in charge of that, and like a "herd" of cats, are going about it their own special way.

This feels a lot like doing DHTML in the early 90s, with a "Netscape" way and a "Microsoft" way of doing things… the answer there was the W3C specifying a "standard" that both parties were held to.

I think Wayland will need to do the same thing, and it is what X was doing. There were a lot of X extensions that are no longer in use, but a good number of them were also implementing features that catered for such edge cases as the ones I mention above.

Sure, the choice of DE is rather sparse at the moment, but that will improve: there weren't a lot of X11 desktop environments in the early 90s either… I seem to recall Gnome and KDE were circa 1997~1998 or so… a good decade after X itself came out.

But not a lot will improve until there is some sort of API standardisation in Wayland, and that is the point people keep missing.

#Wayland #X11

I keep a copy of #fvwm3 source to test or report bugs. After a long while I had update the source today; in CHANGELOG* found:

Buildsystem: deprecating #autotools for #meson/muon #1068 <https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3/discussions/1068> by ThomasAdam @thomasadam c 202410.

#softwareDev #windowManager

I’ve just heard that Andy Emmerson (G8PTH) passed away this morning

A lifelong telephone, radio and TV enthusiast he regularly published articles in wireless and electronics magazines throughout the 70s,80s,90s and 2000s, he also founded the UKs largest telephone collectors group

He sold me my first two plesseyphones!

He was an all round smashing chap who will be greatly missed. Here’s a recording he made in the 70s

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=15tsrrjmBuY
and
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6lAaVVJ7tE

Cheers Andy!