Celebrating a Milestone: BoxyBSD’s 500th Free VPS Provisioned

This weekend marks an incredible milestone for BoxyBSD: we’ve provisioned our 500th free VPS instance! What started as a passion project aimed at supporting the open-source community has grown into something truly special, and I couldn’t be more proud to see the impact it’s having on learners, enthusiasts, and open-source contributors worldwide.

Building a Bridge to BSD and Beyond

BoxyBSD was born out of a simple yet powerful idea: to lower the barriers to entry for anyone eager to learn, experiment, or contribute to BSD-based operating systems. By providing free virtual private servers (VPS), I’ve been able to offer a platform where beginners can explore the intricacies of system administration, networking, and security practices without the financial burden of hosting costs.

This mission also extends to supporting open-source projects. Many community-driven initiatives lack the infrastructure needed to thrive. BoxyBSD fills that gap by providing free hosting on a range of operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, as well as more niche systems like DragonflyBSD, MidnightBSD, but also systems for our (Open)-Solaris friends like Illumos.

Empowering Learners and Projects

For students and beginners, having hands-on experience is crucial to mastering the complexities of technology. My free VPS offerings allow users to spin up and work on real systems in a controlled, cost-free environment. Whether you’re debugging a script, setting up a web server, or learning how to configure a firewall, BoxyBSD provides a sandbox where mistakes are lessons, not liabilities.

For open-source projects, the free hosting serves as a launching pad, enabling collaboration and innovation without the need for budgetary approval. It’s inspiring to see how many great ideas have found a home on BoxyBSD servers!

Recognized and Appreciated by the BSD Community

The reception from the BSD community has been humbling – especially in the BSD.cafe (by Stefano Marinelli) where both projects in addition aim to help newcomers and build up the community of BSD based systems. These systems have long been cherished for their stability, performance, and open-source ethos, and I’m honored that my BoxyBSD project is seen as a valuable contributor to this ecosystem. The kind words, collaboration, and support from users around the world keep this project alive and thriving.

Also just launched – the new Matrix Bot in our VPS provisioning channel, designed to streamline the user experience. Created by gyptazy, this bot automates key management tasks, including auto VPS creation, making it easier for users to get started with their free VPS instances. With its intuitive features, the bot enhances efficiency and simplifies the process of managing VPS requests.

What’s Next?

Hitting the 500-instance mark is just the beginning. I’m excited to continue expanding our capacity, adding new features, and exploring partnerships to further enhance what BoxyBSD can offer. Our commitment to the BSD and open-source communities is unwavering, and I can’t wait to see what the next 500 instances will bring.

To everyone who has supported BoxyBSD, whether by using our services, sharing our mission, or contributing to open-source projects hosted on our platform: thank you. This milestone belongs to all of us, and I’m looking forward to growing this community together.

A special thanks goes to Moritz Mantel, Nerdscave-Hosting and Servermanagementpanel for their awesome support by providing additional computing resources, helping this project to scale beyond the limits of what I (as gyptazy) could achieve on my own.

If you’re interested in learning more, joining the community, or spinning up your own free VPS, visit us at BoxyBSD.com or join us in our Matrix Channel at #boxybsd:bsd.cafe. Let’s keep the spirit of open-source alive, one box at a time!