BSD Developer Mike Karels Dies, FreeBSD 13 Testing
-
LWN ☛ Mike Karels has passed away
We have just received the sad news that longtime core BSD developer Mike Karels has died; he will certainly be missed.
-
Adriaan de Groot ☛ FreeBSD 13 Testing
FreeBSD 13 is still supported as of this writing (much to the chagrin of the KDE-FreeBSD folks, who would like 14-only as soon as possible for ease of support and patching). My own machine is a weird Franken-beastie somewhere between 13.2 and 13.3, but I’ve been wrestling with some package-building failures on the FreeBSD cluster machines for all of 13.2, 13.3 and 14.0 – it builds on my machine, and then fails with compiler errors on the cluster. More weirdly still, it looks like “obvious missing C++ headers”, so I don’t understand why it works for me. Here’s some notes for my future self about quickly setting up a virtual machine for ports testing.
Update
A late obituary of sorts:
-
In Memory of Mike Karels
Mike’s vision and dedication were instrumental in shaping the FreeBSD we know and use today. His legacy will continue to inspire and guide us in our future endeavors.
A couple more (late):
-
BSD veteran: Michael J. Karels died at the age of 68
This machine ran a Sixth Edition Unix (V6 Unix) with some extensions from 2.8BSD and 2.9BSD. The PDP11/40 aroused his interest, and he wrote a Fortran program for scientific evaluations. At some point, errors occurred on the system, so an employee replaced V6 Unix with version 7 – this employee was Bill Jolitz, who died in March 2022 and who, together with his wife, was instrumental in the development of 386BSD. Unix V7 did not run particularly well on the PDP11/40 and the device drivers for the technical instruments did not work either. Without much prior knowledge, Michael J. Karels familiarized himself with the subject and – with the help of Bill Jolitz – adapted programs and drivers to V7 Unix.
-
In Memory of Mike Karels
We are deeply saddened about the passing of Mike Karels, a pivotal figure in the history of BSD UNIX, a respected member of the FreeBSD community, and the Deputy Release Engineer for the FreeBSD Project. Mike’s contributions to the development and advancement of BSD systems were profound and have left an indelible mark on the Project.
Mike’s vision and dedication were instrumental in shaping the FreeBSD we know and use today. His legacy will continue to inspire and guide us in our future endeavors.