EuroBSDCon Brussels: A Personal Recap

This year, EuroBSDCon2026 couldn't have been more convenient for me — Brussels, practically on my doorstep. My main curiosity going in was simple: how many people actually make a living from BSD, and what does this community really look like?

Registration came to €515 for the weekend, which included a T-shirt and the Saturday networking event, plus an additional €250 for Kirk McKusick's training. I skipped the hotel since I live about an hour from Brussels, but three days of parking still cost me €37 (Sunday street parking, at least, was free).

Friday: Training with a Legend

Henning Brauer gave me a warm welcome and handed me my badge — a small QR-coded pass that unlocked access to the various talks and activities throughout the event.
For the Friday training, I chose to go back to the roots and follow Kirk McKusick's session, An Introduction to the Kernel Services and I/O System of the FreeBSD Open-Source Operating System. I never received the paper copy of the materials, but the training itself was an excellent overview of core kernel concepts: disk I/O with deep dives into FFS and ZFS, network I/O covering TCP, UDP, and SCTP, and plenty more. I'm not a kernel developer myself, but it was genuinely fascinating to follow — understanding the problems these systems faced and how they were solved, including the milestones of UFS 1 and 2 through 2020 and the evolution of block sizes.

What struck me just as much were the informal conversations during breaks. McKusick spoke about his involvement in the BSDi vs. AT&T dispute between 1992 and 1994. People like him have had an enormous impact on BSD and operating systems in general — it was genuinely an honor to attend his training.

Saturday: Talks, Discoveries, and a Museum Visit

Saturday brought the usual lineup of presentations, and as always, choosing which to attend was a dilemma. Fortunately, most (if not all) sessions were recorded and are available here.

I won't cover every talk, but a few things stood out to me:

- Alan Jude announced that an LTS version of FreeBSD is in the works. More details are available on Klara Systems' website.
- Stefano's talk on restoring 140 servers in a single night was a compelling reminder of why you always need to be prepared for the worst.
- I had an interesting conversation with a representative from OpnSense, one of the event's sponsors, who offered a great example of a company successfully building a business around a BSD-based OS.
- Baptiste Daroussin's update on the rcd service manager was worth catching — I think this piece of software could become a major component for FreeBSD going forward.

In the evening, we visited the African Museum in Tervuren, with a few vintage trams reserved specifically to shuttle BSD attendees there directly. The museum stayed open for us until 21:00, and honestly, I was more impressed by the building itself and its recent restoration than by the exhibits — the restored architecture and surrounding park are genuinely worth seeing. The evening wrapped up with a very good meal and plenty of variety at the restaurant.

 
 
 
 
 
Throughout the day, I struck up conversations with various attendees and noticed something surprising: most people work on BSD in their spare time. Of the fewer than ten people I talked to, very few actually make money from BSD-related work — and when they do, it's typically as freelancers or employees at small companies. This came as a real surprise to me; I'd expected the opposite. Of course, this is just an informal impression from a small sample.

Sunday: More Talks and the Closing Numbers

Sunday's schedule was packed with interesting topics: GEFS for OpenBSD, hotplugging in bhyve, the state of hibernate support on FreeBSD, and more. The day also included the traditional group photo of all attendees — apparently something of a EuroBSDCon institution.

In the afternoon, two talks stood out. Dave Cottehuber spoke about the challenge of patching systems fast enough in today's threat landscape, and Varinka Ohanyan and her team presented their work building a centralized FreeBSD server for researchers.

Henning Brauer also gave a talk on OpenNTP, a project he started 20 years ago. It's remarkable to see what someone with that kind of design and engineering capability can build over time — and worth remembering that Henning is also one of the main contributors to pf.

The event closed with Henning announcing the final attendance numbers: over 240 people, including 55 from Germany, 19 from the USA, and just 17 from Belgium — not exactly a proud showing for my fellow countrymen. Next year's EuroBSDCon2027 will be held in Bratislava.

Overall Impressions

A few closing thoughts. It was genuinely disappointing that a university like VUB couldn't provide decent Wi-Fi — their network only allowed HTTPS traffic, which was frustrating for anyone needing SSH, email, or other protocols.

That aside, it was a real pleasure spending time with so many sharp, dedicated people. A few conversations stood out in particular, with:

• Kirk McKusick
• Henning Brauer
• Stefan Sperling
• Alan Jude
• Stefano Marinelli
• Joel Carnat
• Olivier Certner

— and many others whose names I've unfortunately forgotten. Apologies to them.

What struck me most was how well everyone seemed to know each other already — I imagine they stay in touch via email and chat throughout the year, and events like this are a rare chance to finally meet in person. It was a genuine privilege to meet and talk with several of the "famous" names of the BSD world.

That said, I'm not yet sure I'll be back for the next EuroBSDCon — it'll depend on what tutorials are on offer.