Joe Maloney

Open-source contributor · github.com/pkgdemon

Blog

The 50th Floor Porting launchd to FreeBSD — and why FreeNAS Corral is next. On the phases of a software life, AI as a paintbrush, vibe coding honestly, and the rabbit hole that led to a standalone Mach kernel module.
How a Computer Should Work The case for an offline-first appliance, simple enough for a mere mortal. A quiet boot, login without the internet, applications you actually own, upgrades that don't erase your disk, and a desktop that runs on refurbished hardware.

SquashFS Setup Guide for Gershwin Workspace Building a SquashFS-based workspace on Debian/Linux.
Setting Chromium as the Default Web Browser Configuring the default browser under GNUstep.
Fixing .local (mDNS) Resolution Getting mDNS name resolution working on Debian/Devuan.
Zsh System-Wide Setup Configuring zsh as a system-wide shell environment.
ALSA + dmix + apulse Setup Sharing the sound card via ALSA dmix with apulse, no PulseAudio/PipeWire.
NFS Locking Freeze Investigation Why Chromium screen-share freezes the X session when $HOME is on NFS: the server doesn't register NLM, SQLite POSIX locks block in fcntl(), and the main thread stops servicing X events. Evidence, root cause, and fix.

GNUstep Research Menu rendering (macOS vs GNUstep), menu-bar ownership, the WindowServer.app display-server plan, and the Gershwin WindowManager QA plan.
FreeBSD Research Live ISO / livecd architecture, SquashFS on FreeBSD, gunion/unionfs reroot, and the native Copier.framework installer backend.
Launchd Research Porting Apple’s launchd to FreeBSD — the AF_UNIX sockets track and the Mach track (mach.ko, libdispatch, XPC, configd, IOKit, and the userland command ports).
NextBSD CI pipelines, native cross-build, the Gershwin live-ISO pipeline, kernel syscall-slot work, and the .ko→.kext conversion for the NextBSD base.
Gershwin Research The Gershwin desktop — installer backends (Linux/FreeBSD/NextBSD), live-ISO architecture, and component/CI plans for gershwin-desktop.

NextBSD 2026–present — Commits, Pull Requests Reviving NextBSD — macOS system technologies (launchd, Mach IPC, libdispatch) on a modern FreeBSD base, with a CI-built kernel, modules, and live ISO.
HexBSD 2025–present — Commits A native macOS application, written in Swift, for managing FreeBSD servers.
Gershwin 2025–present — Commits, Pull Requests A GNUstep-based desktop environment.
GNUstep 2024–present — Commits, Pull Requests Open-source implementation of the OpenStep / Cocoa frameworks — Foundation, AppKit, and the Objective-C runtime.
GhostBSD 2015–present — Commits, Pull Requests Desktop-focused FreeBSD distribution with a ready-to-use graphical environment.
FreeNAS/TrueNAS 2015–2022 — Commits, Pull Requests FreeBSD-based network-attached storage operating system, with ZFS at its core.
HelloSystem 2019–2020 — Commits FreeBSD-based desktop system designed for simplicity and a Mac-like experience.
NextBSD 2015–2016 — Pull Requests Effort to bring macOS system technologies — launchd, Mach IPC, libdispatch — to a FreeBSD base.
PCBSD/TrueOS 2013–2018 — Commits, Pull Requests Desktop-oriented FreeBSD distribution (later TrueOS), focused on ease of installation and use.

More examples, including forks I've contributed fixes to, can be found on my GitHub.