Sculpt OS 25.04 released
Sculpt OS 25.04 has been released, and with it come a number of very welcome and important improvements. What most users will care about the most is the updated version of the Falkon web browser, built atop Qt 6.2.2 and its accompanying qtwebengine release, which in turn is using version 112 of the Chromium engine. Aside from this major improvement, there’s two other things that stand out: Usability-wise, the new version comes with two highly anticipated features. First, building u … ⌘ Read more

Why did Windows 7, for a few months, log on slower if you have a solid color background?
Time for another story from Raymond Chen, about why, in Windows 7, logging in took 30 seconds if you had set a solid colour as your background. Windows 7’s logon system needs to wait for a number of tasks to be completed, like creating the taskbar, populating the desktop with icons, and setting the background. If all of those tasks are completed or 30 seconds … ⌘ Read more

Google is working on a big UI overhaul for Android
When Google released the fourth beta of Android 16 this month, many users were disappointed by the lack of major UI changes. As Beta 4 is the final beta, it’s likely the stable Android 16 release won’t look much different than last year’s release. However, that might not hold true for subsequent updates. Google recently confirmed it will unveil a new version of its Material Design theme at its upcoming developer conference, and we … ⌘ Read more

PATH isn’t real on Linux
I have no idea how much relevance this short but informative rundown of how PATH works in Linux has in the real world, but I found it incredibly interesting and enlightening. The basic gist – and I might be wrong, there’s code involved and I’m not very smart – is that Linux itself needs absolute paths to binaries, while shells and programming languages do not. In other words, the Linux kernel does not know about PATH, and any lookup you’re doing comes from either the shell or the pr … ⌘ Read more

“I use zip bombs to protect my server”
The majority of the traffic on the web is from bots. For the most part, these bots are used to discover new content. These are RSS Feed readers, search engines crawling your content, or nowadays AI bots crawling content to power LLMs. But then there are the malicious bots. These are from spammers, content scrapers or hackers. At my old employer, a bot discovered a wordpress vulnerability and inserted a malicious script into our server. It then turned the m … ⌘ Read more

Garmin Pay: yes, you can do NFC tap-to-pay in stores without big tech
Late last year, I went on a long journey to rid myself of as much of my remaining ties to the big technology giants as I could. This journey is still ongoing, with only a few thin ties remaining, but there’s one big one I can scratch off the list: mobile in-store payments with NFC tap-to-pay. I used Google Pay and a WearOS smartwatch for this, but neither of those work on de-Googled Android – I … ⌘ Read more

Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.4 released
The Trinity Desktop Environment, the modern-day continuation of the KDE 3.x series, has released version R14.1.4. This maintenance release brings new vector wallpapers and colour schemes, support for Unicode surrogate characters and planes above zero (for emoji, among other things), tabs in kpdf, transparency and other new visual effects for Dekorator, and much more. TDE R14.1.4 is already available for a variety of Linux distributions, and c … ⌘ Read more

OpenBSD 7.7 released
Another six months have passed, so it’s time for a new OpenBSD release: OpenBSD 7.7 to be exact. Browsing through the long, detailed list of changes, a few important bits jump out. First, OpenBSD 7.7 adds support for Ryzen AI 300 (Strix Point, Strix Halo, Krackan Point), Radeon RX 9070 (Navi 48), and Intel’s Arrow Lake, adding support for the latest x86 processors to OpenBSD. There seems to be quite a few entries in the list related to power management, from work on hibernation and suspend … ⌘ Read more

Crucial Wii homebrew library contains code stolen from Nintendo, RTEMS
The Wii homebrew community has been dealt a pretty serious blow, as developers of The Homebrew Channel for the Wii have discovered that not only does an important library most Wii homebrew software rely on use code stolen straight from Nintendo, that same library also uses code taken from an open source real-time operating system without giving proper attribution. Most Wii homebrew software i … ⌘ Read more

9front “CLAUSE 15 COMMON ELEMENTS OF MAUS AND STAR TYPE” released
Few things in life make me happier than a new 9front release. This new release, 9front “CLAUSE 15 COMMON ELEMENTS OF MAUS AND STAR TYPE”, comes with a variety of fixes and new features, such as temperature sensor support for Ryzen processors, a new Intel i225 2.5 GbE driver, a number of low-level kernel improvements, and so, so many more small fixes and changes. If you use 9front, you already know all o … ⌘ Read more

RetrOS-32: a 32bit hobby operating system with graphics, multitasking, and more
RetrOS-32 is a 32bit operating system written from scratch, with graphics, multitasking and networking capabilities. The kernel is written in C and assembly, while the userspace applications are written in C++, using Make for compilation, all licensed under the MIT license. It runs on Qemu, of course, but a variety of real hardware is also supported, which is pretty cool and r … ⌘ Read more

The VTech Socratic method
We’ve had a lot of fun with VTech’s computers in the past on this blog. Usually, they’re relatively spartan computers with limited functionality, but they did make something very interesting in the late 80s. The Socrates is their hybrid video game console/computer design from 1988, and today we’ll start tearing into it. ↫ Leaded Solder web log Now we’re in for the good stuff. A weird educational computer/game console/toy thing from the late ’80s, by VTech. I have a massive soft s … ⌘ Read more

Torvalds states the obvious: file systems should be case-sensitive
Apparently, the Bcachefs people are having problems with case-folding, and Linus Torvalds himself is not happy about it. Torvalds holds the only right opinion in this matter, which is that filesystems should obviously be case-sensitive. Case-insensitive names are horribly wrong, and you shouldn’t have done them at all. The problem wasn’t the lack of testing, the problem was implementing it in the fir … ⌘ Read more

Oddly, in defense of Google keeping Chrome
As much as I’m a fan of breaking up Google, I’m not entirely sure carving Chrome out of Google without a further plan for what happens to the browser is a great idea. I mean, Google is bad, but but things could be so, so much worse. OpenAI would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome if antitrust enforcers are successful in forcing the Alphabet unit to sell the popular web browser as part of a bid to restore competition in search, an OpenAI execu … ⌘ Read more

Steam to highlight accessibility support for games on store pages
The Steam store and desktop client will soon be able to help players find games that feature accessibility support. If your game has accessibility features, you can now enter that information in the Steamworks ‘edit store’ section for your app. ↫ Steam announcements page I have a lot of criticism for the Steam client application – it’s a overly complex, unattractive, buggy, slow, top-heavy Chrome engi … ⌘ Read more

A tour inside the IBM z17
Welcome to a photo-driven tour of the IBM z17. I’ve scoured the image library to pull dig deep inside these machines that most people don’t get an opportunity to see inside, and I’ll share some of the specifications gleaned from the announcement and related Redbooks. ↫ Elizabeth K. Joseph at the IBM community website These IBM mainframes don’t have to be beautiful, but they always are. I wish I could see a z17 up close – hopefully IBM will release a detailed video walkthrough of … ⌘ Read more

Fedora change proposal would remove the X11 GNOME session from Fedora 43
I’m sure this won’t make anybody mad, and we can all have a reasonable discussion about this. A change proposal for Fedora suggests Fedora should drop the X11 GNOME session from Fedora 43, moving GNOME’s target of removing X11 in GNOME 50 to the Fedora release carrying GNOME 49. Fedora 43 will be released in roughly six months. The reasoning behind the proposal should be no surprise. Thi … ⌘ Read more

TacOS: an x86_64 UNIX-like OS from scratch
TacOS is a UNIX-like kernel which is able to run DOOM, among various other smaller userspace programs. It has things like a VFS, scheduler, TempFS, devices, context switching, virtual memory management, physical page frame allocation, and a port of Doom. It runs both on real hardware (tested on my laptop) and in the Qemu emulator. ↫ TacOS GitHub page TacOS – great name – is written in C, and explicitly a hobby and toy project. The code’s licensed … ⌘ Read more

How a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2
The headline sets the stage, and the article delivers. This was the most interesting bug I’ve encountered for a while. I initially had a hard time believing that a bug like this would directly tie to a specific OS release, but I was proven completely wrong. At the end of the day, it was a simple bug in San Andreas and this function should have never worked right, and yet, at least on PC it hid i … ⌘ Read more

The wonderful world of Linux package managers
One of the strong points of Linux has always been how solid the experience of installing and managing software is. Contrarily to what happens in the Windows and macOS world, software on Linux is obtained through something called a package manager, a piece of software that manages any piece of software the user installs, as well as its dependencies, automatically. ↫ Luca Bramè at Libre.News It truly is. I can’t imagine using any operating sy … ⌘ Read more

European Commission: Apple’s ‘Core Technology Fee’ and other hurdles are illegal under the DMA
The fines weren’t the only Digital Markets Act news coming from this fine continent today. The European Commission also closed its investigation into Apple’s user choice obligations under the DMA, and while Apple has made good progress in a few areas, the EC states Apple is still acting illegally in a variety of others. First, the good news for App … ⌘ Read more

Apple fined for €500 million by EC, Facebook for €200 million
The European Commission has levied fines against both Apple and Facebook for violating the Digital Markets Act. Apple has to pay a €500 million fine, and Facebook a €200 million fine. Apple is breaking EU law by not allowing application developers to inform users of other offers outside the App Store. The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed … ⌘ Read more

Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE open source software report
Linux on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE use the s390x hardware architecture to run various Linux distributions, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and Ubuntu. Tens of thousands of software packages are tested and distributed through these projects, and various community distributions. ↫ Elizabeth K. Joseph at the IBM community website Various Linux distributions are available for the … ⌘ Read more

The mysterious inetpub folder is actually a crucial part of a Windows security fix
Remember the odd inetpub folder that seemingly randomly appeared on people’s root drives after installing a Windows 11 update? Everybody assumed it was something left over from an update script, and that the folder was safe to remove. Well, it turns out that’s not the case, as the empty folder is actually a crucial part of a security fix for a serious vulnerability. I … ⌘ Read more

Windows Recall failed the moose test, and nobody will ever forget it
Ars Technica took a look at how the current version of Windows Recall works, including the improvements Microsoft made since the initial security nightmare of a rollout, and concludes: Recall continues to demand an extraordinary level of trust that Microsoft hasn’t earned. However secure and private it is—and, again, the version people will actually get is much better than the version that caused … ⌘ Read more

Thanks again to our outgoing sponsor: Nova Custom
We’d like to thank our outgoing sponsor, Nova Custom, for sponsoring OSNews! Nova Custom, based in The Netherlands, makes laptops focused on privacy, customisation, and freedom. Nova Custom laptops ship with either Linux, Windows, or no operating system, and they’re uniquely certified for Qubes OS (the V54 model will be certified soon), the ultra-secure and private operating system. On top of that, Nova Custom laptops come with Dasha … ⌘ Read more

Let’s give PRO/VENIX a barely adequate, pre-C89 TCP/IP stack (featuring Slirp-CK)
Only a few weeks ago, I linked to Cameron Kaiser’s excellent deep dive into the DEC Professional 380 running PRO/VENIX, and now we have a follow-up. Fortunately, today we have AI we have many more excellent and comprehensive documents on the subject, and more importantly, we’ve recently brought back up an oddball platform that doesn’t have networking either: our DEC Profess … ⌘ Read more

“How I use Kate Editor”
I love the Kate Text editor. I use it for pretty much all the programming projects I do. Kate has been around for long time now, about 20 years! At least earliest blog post for it I could find was written in 2004. I wanted to go over my workflow with it, why I like it so much and hopefully get more people to try it out. ↫ Akseli Lahtinen Programmers and developers tend to be very set in their ways and have their preferred workflows – which profession doesn’t, honestly – and since there … ⌘ Read more

Synology confirms that higher-end NAS products will require its branded drives
“Synology-branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus series, with plans to update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,” a Synology representative told Ars by email. “Extensive internal testing has shown that drives that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are … ⌘ Read more

Blue95 Topanga released with Paint and Plus! clones
Only a few weeks ago we talked about Blue95, a Fedora-based distribution focused on bringing the Windows 95 look to the Linux world by integrating a set of existing Windows 95 Xfce themes. Since Fedora 42 has just been released, the Blue95 project also pushed out a new release, called Blue95 Topanga. It brings with it all the improvements from Fedora 42, but also goes a step further be integrating new applications to further add … ⌘ Read more

LXQt 2.2.0 released
LXQt, the Qt-based alternative to KDE as Xfce is the GTK-based alternative to GNOME, has released version 2.2.0. LXQt is in the middle of its transition to Wayland, and as such, this release brings a number of fixes and improvements for Wayland, like improved multi-display support and updated compatibility with Wayland compositors. Beyond all the Wayland work, LXQt Power Management now supports power profiles, text rendering in QTerminal and QTermWidget has been improved, the file manager PC … ⌘ Read more

Google is a monopolist in online advertising tech, judge says
Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.86 trillion company and alter its power over the internet. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely … ⌘ Read more

ActiveX disabled by default in Microsoft 365
ActiveX is a powerful technology that enables rich interactions within Microsoft 365 applications, but its deep access to system resources also increases security risks. Starting this month, the Windows versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Visio will have a new default configuration for ActiveX controls: Disable all controls without notification. ↫ Zaeem Patel at the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog Be ho … ⌘ Read more

A threat model for opposing authoritarianism
A decade ago, I published a book on privacy “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.” In the book, and since then, in articles and speeches, I have been dispensing advice to people on how to protect their privacy. But my advice did not envision the moment we are in – where the government would collaborate with a tech CEO to strip-mine all of our data from government databases and use i … ⌘ Read more

What makes Slackware different?
I’m not entirely sure how to link to this properly, but what we have here is a simple, to-the-point text file describing some of the benefits of Slackware, the oldest still maintained Linux distribution. It’s still run by Patrick Volkerding, and focuses on conservative choices and simplicity over ease. I doubt I have to explain the benefits of Slackware to the average OSNews reader, but this simple little text file does serve as a great marketing tool. The fact it’s a … ⌘ Read more

CISA extends funding to ensure ‘no lapse in critical CVE services’
CISA says the U.S. government has extended MITRE’s funding to ensure no continuity issues with the critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. The announcement follows a warning from MITRE Vice President Yosry Barsoum that government funding for the CVE and CWE programs was set to expire today, April 16, potentially leading to widespread disruption across the cybersecurity industry. ↫ … ⌘ Read more

The captchas have become sentient: we’re working on fixing the captcha issue
As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been having some issues with captchas. The powers that be – which isn’t me, I don’t know anything about web development – are looking into it, and once we’ve pinpointed the problem we’ll get it fixed. It’s annoying us too, so we want this resolved as quickly as possible. OSNews readers just trying to visit the site to read some tech stuff shou … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 42 released
Fedora 42 has been released, bringing with it a major policy change: the Fedora KDE version now has the same status as the GNOME version. This means that Fedora KDE will be getting the same promotion, website space, and potential blocker status as the GNOME version. For now, the naming is a bit weird – Fedora Workstation for GNOME, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop for KDE – but they intend to fix this down the line. Feodra 42 also brings with it a brand new installation interface, which replaces the … ⌘ Read more

exwm: Emacs X Windows Manager
EXWM (Emacs X Window Manager) is a full-featured tiling X window manager for Emacs built on top of XELB. ↫ exwm GitHub page It supports both tiling and stacking windows, dynamic workspaces, RandR, a system tray, and a lot more. XELB stands for X protocol Emacs Lisp Binding, and it’s a “pure Elisp implementation of X11 protocol based on the XML description files from XCB project”. ⌘ Read more

Whiskey developer throws in the towel, suggests to just buy CrossOver instead
Isaac Marovitz, the developer of Whiskey, a frontend for Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit and Wine, has decided to throw in the towel. The developer is advising users to buy CrossOver instead, which provides the same service. The reasoning behind their decision seems sound, and are actually quite noble and considerate. First and foremost, it’s the usual problem lone developers run i … ⌘ Read more

Why is there a “small house” in IBM’s Code Page 437?
There’s a small house ( ⌂ ) in the middle of IBM’s infamous character set Code Page 437. “Small house”—that’s the official IBM name given to the glyph at code position 0x7F, where a control character for “Delete” (DEL) should logically exist. It’s cute, but a little strange. I wonder, how did it get there? Why did IBM represent DEL as a house, of all things? ↫ Heikki Lotvonen Don’t waste any time here, and go read the article. It’ … ⌘ Read more

Fedora change aims for 99% package reproducibility
The effort to ensure that open-source software is reproducible has been gathering steam over the years, and gaining traction with major Linux distributions. Debian, for example, has been working toward reproducible builds for more than a decade; it can now produce official live CDs of the current stable release that are reproducible. Fedora started on the path much later, but it has progressed far enough that the project is now con … ⌘ Read more

“I bought a Mac”
Yep. I regret to inform you all that, as of January 2025, I am a Mac user: I bought a Mac. I have betrayed the penguin. So, how did such an icon of early 2000s Apple fall into my grubby hands? Well, it all started with the Wii U. I’m not joking. ↫ Loganius That’s one heck of an excuse to get a PowerPC G4 – needing to do Linux kvm hacking to fix a bug. While getting the PowerMac G4 they bought all set up and working properly for development purposes, someone else fixed the bug in question in the mean … ⌘ Read more

The subjective charms of Objective-C
To argue that Objective-C resembles a metaphysically divine language, or even a good language, is like saying Shakespeare is best appreciated in pig latin. Objective-C is, at best, polarizing. Ridiculed for its unrelenting verbosity and peculiar square brackets, it is used only for building Mac and iPhone apps and would have faded into obscurity in the early 1990s had it not been for an unlikely quirk of history. Nevertheless, in my time working as a softwar … ⌘ Read more

Pinta 3.0 brings major GTK4 overhaul
Over 15 years ago, I wrote about the launch of a Paint.NET clone for Linux, called Pinta, written in GTK. That was merely version 0.1, and over time, it’s become somewhat of a staple for many Linux users. The project just released version 3, which is a major revision, moving the application over to GTK4 and Libadwaita. Built on the robust GTK 4 toolkit and the sleek Libadwaita, Pinta 3.0 brings a redesigned user interface that’s faster, more responsive, and … ⌘ Read more

Elliptical Python programming
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom. ↫ Susam Pal I can’t program and know nothing about Python, but this still made me laugh. ⌘ Read more

Windows Recall returns, and its companion feature does not keep data on-device
Remember Windows Recall, the Windows feature that would take a screenshot of your desktop every three seconds, stored them in a database, and then let you search through them at later dates? The feature has been hobbled by implementation problems, security issues, and privacy troubles, and has been released in preview and pulled since its original unveiling. Well, it’s back in … ⌘ Read more

MacSSL: a port of Mbed-TLS for the classic Mac OS 7/8/9
Yesterday we had SDL2 for the classic Mac OS, today we have modern SSL/TLS for the classic Mac OS. This is a C89/C90 port of MbedTLS for Mac System 7/8/9. It works, and compiles under Metrowerks Codewarrior Pro 4. This is a basic app that performs a GET request on whatever is in api.h, and prints the result out to the text box (with a lot of debug information, of course). The idea of this project was to build an ‘app’ of … ⌘ Read more

Amiga OS 3.2 Update 3 released
I’ve long lost the ability to keep track of whatever’s happening in the Amiga community, and personally I tend to just focus on tracking MorphOS and AROS as best I can. The remnants of the real AmigaOS, and especially who owns, maintains, and develops which version, are mired in legal battles and ownership limbo, and since I can think of about a trillion things I’d rather do than keep track of the interpersonal drama by reading various Amiga forums, I honestly didn’t ev … ⌘ Read more

SDL2 ported to Mac OS 9
Well, this you certainly don’t see every day. This is a “rough draft” of SDL2 for MacOS 9, using CodeWarrior Pro 6 and 7. Enough was done to get it building in CW, and the start of a “macosclassic” video driver was created. It DOES seem to basically work, but much still needs to be done. Event handling is just enough to handling Command-Q, there is no audio, etc etc etc. ↫ A cast of thousands The hardest part was a video driver for the classic Mac OS, which had to be created mostly f … ⌘ Read more

Not updated in 7 years, IIS is still a default part of Windows, apparently
This month’s security updates for Windows 11 create a new empty folder on drive C. It is called “inetpub,” and it does not contain any extra folders or files. Its properties window shows 0 bytes in size and that it was created by the system itself. Neowin checked a bunch of Windows 11 PCs with the April 2025 security updates installed, and all of them had inetpub on drive C. ↫ Taras Bu … ⌘ Read more

IBM unveils z17 mainframe, z/OS 3.2
IBM today announced the IBM z17, the next generation of the company’s iconic mainframe, fully engineered with AI capabilities across hardware, software, and systems operations. Powered by the new IBM Telum II processor, IBM z17 expands the system’s capabilities beyond transactional AI capabilities to enable new workloads. ↫ IBM z17 press release Alongside this brand new behemoth of a computer, IBM also announced z/OS 3.2, the next version of its mainframe opera … ⌘ Read more

FreeDOS 1.4 released
With FreeDOS being, well, DOS, you’d think there wasn’t much point in putting out major releases and making big changes, and you’d mostly be right. However, being a DOS clone doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement within the confines of the various parts and tools that make up DOS, and that’s exactly where FreeDOS focuses its attention. FreeDOS 1.4 comes about three years after 1.2. This version includes an updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help system. This also includes i … ⌘ Read more

What’s up with Linux support for Qualcomm X Elite chips?
Remember when Qualcomm promised Linux would be a first-tier platform alongside Windows for its Snapdragon X Elite, almost a year ago now? Well, the Snapdragon X laptop have been out in the market for a while running Windows, but Linux support is still a complete crapshoot, despite the lofty promises by Qualcomm. Tuxedo, a European Linux OEM who promised to ship a Snapdragon X laptop running Linux, has posted an update on … ⌘ Read more

This month in Redox, March 2025
Another month, another month of Redox improvements and bug fixes. This month saw a ton of work on process management as part of the NLnet grant, massive improvements to the USB stack, including a USB hub driver, as well as the usual kernel and driver improvements. On top of all this work, there’s the usual long list of bugfixes and smaller improvements. ⌘ Read more

The insanity of being a software engineer
Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason. But what happened to specializing? When a house is being built, tons of people are involved: architects, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, interior designers, roofers, surveyors, pavers, you name it. You don’t expect a single person, or even a whole single company, to be able to do all of those. ↫ Vitor M. de Sousa Pereira I’ve always found that softwa … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU kernel deep dive
Apple’s Darwin operating system is the Unix-like core underpinning macOS, iOS, and all of Apple’s modern OS platforms. At its heart lies the XNU kernel – an acronym humorously standing for “X is Not Unix.” XNU is a unique hybrid kernel that combines a Mach microkernel core with components of BSD Unix. This design inherits the rich legacy of Mach (originating from 1980s microkernel research) and the robust stability and POSIX compliance of BSD. The … ⌘ Read more

Getting the firmware of a VTech/LeapFrog LeapStart/Magibook
This is a very small blog post about my first reverse engineering project, in which I don’t really reverse engineer anything yet, but I am just getting started! A family member asked me to add additional book data to the LeapStart he bought for his son, this is the starting point here. ↫ leloubil’s blog We’ve all seen toy, child-focused computers like these, and I always find them deeply fascinating. I’m not buyi … ⌘ Read more

Windows Hotpatch comes to client version of Windows
Good news for Windows users, and for once there’s not a hint of sarcasm here: Microsoft has started rolling out Windows Hotpatch to the client versions of Windows. This feature, which comes from the server versions of Windows, allows the operating system to install patches to in-memory processes, removing the need for a number of restarts. Obviously, this is hugely beneficial for users, as they won’t have to deal with constant r … ⌘ Read more

How big is VMS?
This question was asked during my Boot Camp presentation last fall in Boston, and over the past 35 years dozens of times people have asked, how big is VMS? That translates into “how many lines of code are in VMS”? I thought it was time to at least make a stab at pursuing some insight into the answer. I wrote some command procedures to count the number of source lines in .B32, .B64, .C, .MAR, .M64, and .S files. Not counted are blank lines and lines beginning with the standard comment characters and m … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations tainted by the company’s role in the genocide in Gaza
Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of this milestone, Bill Gates has published a blog post about the first code the company ever wrote. In 1975, Paul Allen and I created Microsoft because we believed in our vision of a computer on every desk and in every home. Five decades later, Microsoft continues to innovate new way … ⌘ Read more

An AlphaStation’s SROM
The AlphaStation 500 is a workstation from Digital, circa 1996. Mine is a 500 MHz model and has an Alpha 21164A processor (aka EV56). And the way it boots is weird. On your common-or-garden PC, there has always been some kind of ROM chip. It holds a piece of firmware known as the BIOS. This ROM chip is available at a well-known location in the processor’s address space (remembering that any PC processor boots up in 16-bit, 8088 compatible mode, with a 1 MiB address space, just like an I … ⌘ Read more

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax
Honestly, this would still be easier today than some of the bug reporting systems I’ve seen. ⌘ Read more

Windows 9x QuickInstall simplifies installing Windows 98
If you’re elbow-deep in ’90s retrocomputing and maintain a fleet of your own personal seemingly identical but definitely completely different Windows 98 machines, Windows 9x QuickInstall is tailor-made just for you. It takes the root file system of an already installed Windows 98 system and packages it, whilst allowing drivers and tools to be slipstreamed at will. For the installer, it uses Linux as a base, paired with … ⌘ Read more

Literally Windows on arm: here is Windows running on the Pixel Watch 3
Right off the bat, there is not that much use for a Pixel Watch with Windows on it. The project, as the maker says, is for “shits and giggles” and more like an April Fool’s joke. However, it shows how capable modern smartwatches are, with the Pixel Watch 3 being powered by a processor with four ARM Cortex A53 cores, 2GB of DDR4X memory, and 32GB of storage. Getting Windows to run on Gustave’s … ⌘ Read more

FreeDOS: history, legacy, and a valuable resource for old machines
FreeDOS is a free and open‐source operating system designed to be compatible with MS‑DOS. Developed to keep the DOS experience alive even after Microsoft ended support for MS‑DOS, FreeDOS has grown into a complete environment that not only preserves classic DOS functionality but also introduces modern enhancements. Its simplicity and low resource requirements have made it a cherished resource for retro … ⌘ Read more

Nova Custom: this week’s sponsor
Nova Custom, based in The Netherlands, makes laptops focused on privacy, customisation, and freedom. Nova Custom laptops ship with either Linux, Windows, or no operating system, and they’re uniquely certified for Qubes OS (the V54 model will be certified soon), the ultra-secure and private operating system. On top of that, Nova Custom laptops come with Dasharo coreboot firmware preinstalled, which is completely open source, instead of a proprietary BIOS. Nova Custom c … ⌘ Read more

The 32bit RISC OS needs to be ported to 64bit to survive, seeks help
RISC OS, the operating system from the United Kingdom originally designed to run on Acorn Computer’s Archimedes computers – the first ARM computers – is still actively developed today. Especially since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, new life was breathed into this ageing operating system, and it has gained quite a bit of steady momentum ever since, with tons of small updates, applications, … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft makes it even harder to use a local account on Windows 11
Do you want to install Windows 11 without internet access or without an online Microsoft Account? It seems Microsoft really doesn’t want you to, as it has removed a very common and popular way of bypassing this requirement. In the release notes for the latest builds from the Dev and Beta channels, the company notes: We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and use … ⌘ Read more

Blue95: Fedora Atomic Xfce converted to a Windows 95 desktop
Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme. ↫ Blue95 GitHub page Exactly as it says on the tin. This is by far the easiest way to get the excellent Chigaco95 theme for Xfce set up and working in a polished way, and it also contains a few different application choices from the regular Fedora Xfce desk … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft releases Windows 11 roadmap tool to help make sense of Windows 11’s development
I’ve complained about the utter inscrutability of the Windows release process for a long time, with Microsoft seemingly using channels, build numbers, code names, date-based version numbers, and so on interchangeably, making it incredibly hard to keep track of what is being released when. It turns out even Microsoft itself started losing track, because it … ⌘ Read more

US government’s attack on free speech, science, and research is causing a brain drain
How do you create a brain drain and lose your status as eminent destination for scientists and researchers? The United States seems to be sending out questionnaires to researchers at universities and research institutes outside of the United States, asking them about their political leanings. Dutch universities are strongly advising Dutch researches not to respond … ⌘ Read more

KDE developers show off SDDM replacement
KDE’s login manager, SDDM, has its share of problems, and as such, a number of KDE developers are working on replacement to fix many of these long-standing issues. So, what exactly is wrong with SDDM as it exists today? With SDDM, power management is reinvented from scratch with bespoke configuration. We can’t integrate with Plasma’s network management, power management, volume controls, or brightness controls without reinventing them in the desktop- … ⌘ Read more

Google moves all Android development behind closed doors
Up until now, Google developed several components of Android out in the open, as part of AOSP, while developing everything else behind closed doors, only releasing the source code once the final new Android version was released. This meant that Google had to merge the two branches, which lead to problems and issues, so Google decided it’s now moving all development of Android behind closed doors. What will change is th … ⌘ Read more

How NixOS and reproducible builds could have detected the xz backdoor for the benefit of all
Some more light reading: While it was already established that the open source supply chain was often the target of malicious actors, what is stunning is the amount of energy invested by Jia Tan to gain the trust of the maintainer of the xz project, acquire push access to the repository and then among other perfectly legitimate contributions insert … ⌘ Read more

Playing multimedia with Dillo
What if you want to use a web browser like Dillo, which lacks JavaScript support and can’t play audio or video inside the browser? Dillo doesn’t have the capability to play audio or video directly from the browser, however it can easily offload this task to other programs. This page collects some examples of how to do watch videos and listen to audio tracks or podcasts by using an external player program. In particular we will cover mpv with yt-dlp which supports YouTube … ⌘ Read more

The seL4 microkernel: an introduction
This whitepaper provides an introduction to and overview of seL4. We explain what seL4 is (and is not) and explore its defining features. We explain what makes seL4 uniquely qualified as the operating-system kernel of choice for security- and safety-critical systems, and generally embedded and cyber-physical systems. In particular, we explain seL4’s assurance story, its security- and safety-relevant features, and its benchmark-setting performance. We also d … ⌘ Read more

ReactOS 0.4.15 released
It’s been over three years since the last ReactOS release, but today, in honour of the first commit to the project by the oldest, still active contributor, the project released ReactOS 0.4.15. Of course, there’s been a steady stream of nightly releases, so it’s not like the project stalled or anything, but having a proper release is always nice to have. We are pleased to announce the release of ReactOS 0.4.15! This release offers Plug and Play fixes, audio fixes, memory management fi … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Linux GPU driver ported to Haiku
Nvidia releasing its Linux graphics driver as open source is already bearing fruit for alternative operating systems. As many people already knows, Nvidia published their kernel driver under MIT license: GitHub – NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules: NVIDIA Linux open GPU kernel module source (I will call it NVRM). This driver is very portable and its platform-independent part can be compiled for Haiku with minor effort (but it need to implement OS-specific … ⌘ Read more

SoftBank acquires Ampere Computing
SoftBank Group Corp. today announced that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a leading independent silicon design company, in an all-cash transaction valued at $6.5 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Ampere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group and retain its name. As part of the transaction, Ampere’s lead investors – Carlyle and Oracle – are selling their respective positions in Ampere. ↫ SoftBank and Ampere Computing press release … ⌘ Read more

FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
What do SourceHut, GNOME’s GitLab, and KDE’s GitLab have in common, other than all three of them being forges? Well, it turns out all three of them have been dealing with immense amounts of traffic from “AI” scrapers, who are effectively performing DDoS attacks with such ferocity it’s bringing down the infrastructures of these major open source projects. Being open source, and thus publicly accessible, means these scrapers have … ⌘ Read more

Memory safety for web fonts in Chrome: Google replaces FreeType with Rust-based alternative
There’s no escaping Rust, and the language is leaving its mark everywhere. This time around, Chrome has replaced its use of FreeType with Skrifa, a Rust-based replacement. Skrifa is written in Rust, and created as a replacement for FreeType to make font processing in Chrome secure for all our users. Skifra takes advantage of Rust’s memory safety, and … ⌘ Read more

I think we need a bigger boot partition
Long ago, during the time of creation, I confidently waved my hand and allocated a 1GB ESP partition and a 1GB boot partition, thinking to myself with a confident smile that this would surely be more than enough for the foreseeable future. However, this foreseeable future quickly vanished along with my smile. What was bound to happen eventually came, but I didn’t expect it to arrive so soon. What could possibly require such a large boot partition? And … ⌘ Read more

GNOME 48 released
One of the two major open source desktop environments, GNOME, just released version 48, and it’s got some very big and welcome improvements. First and foremost there’s dynamic triple-buffering, a feature that took over five years of extensive testing to get ready. It will improve the smoothness and fluidity of animations and other movements on the screen, as it did for KDE when it landed there in the middle of last year. GNOME 48 also brings notification stacking, combining notifications from th … ⌘ Read more

Java 24 released
Oracle, the company owned by a guy who purchased a huge chunk of the Kingdom of Hawaii from the Americans, has released Java 24. I’ll be honest and upfront: I just don’t care very much at all about this, as the only interaction I’ve had with Java over the past, I don’t know, 15 years or so, is either because of Minecraft, or because of my obsession with ancient UNIX workstations where Java programs pop up in the weirdest of places. I know Java is massive and used everywhere, but going through the … ⌘ Read more

After 47 years, OpenVMS gets a package manager
As of the 18th of February, OpenVMS, known for its stability and high-availability, 47 years old and ported to 4 different CPU architecture, has a package manager! This article shows you how to use the package manager and talks about a few of its quirks. It’s an early beta version, and you do notice that when using it. A small list of things I noticed, coming from a Linux (apt/yum/dnf) background: There seems to be no automatic dependency … ⌘ Read more

Pebble unveils new devices, and strongly suggests you dump iOS for Android
It’s barely been two months after the announcement that Pebble would return with new watches, and they’re already here – well, sort of. Pebble has announced two new watches for preorder, the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. The former is effectively a Pebble 2, upgraded with new internals, while the Core Time 2 is very similar, but comes with a colour e-ink display and a metal case. Th … ⌘ Read more

Enlightenment 0.27.1 released
A few months after 0.27.0 was released, we’ve got a small update for Enlightenment today, version 0.27.1. It’s a short list of bugfixes, and one tiny new feature: you can now use the scroll wheel to change the volume when your cursor is hovering over the mixer controls. That’s it. That’s the release. ⌘ Read more

GIMP 3.0 released
It’s taken a Herculean seven-year effort, but GIMP 3.0 has finally been released. There are so many new features, changes, and improvements in this release that it’s impossible to highlight all of them. First and foremost, GIMP 3.0 marks the shift to GTK3 – this may be surprising considering GTK4 has been out for a while, but major applications such as GIMP tend to stick to more tried and true toolkit versions. GTK4 also brings with it the prickly discussion concerning a possible adoption of lib … ⌘ Read more

More pro for the DEC Professional 380 (featuring PRO/VENIX)
Settle down children, it’s time for another great article by Cameron Kaiser. This time, they’re going to tell us about the DEC Professional 380 running PRO/VENIX. The Pro 380 upgraded to the beefier J-11 (“Jaws”) CPU from the PDP-11/73, running two to three times faster than the 325 and 350. It had faster RAM and came with more of it, and boasted quicker graphics with double the vertical resolution built right into … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s long-lost hidden recovery partition from 1994 has been found
In 1994, a single Macintosh Performa model, the 550, came from the factory with a dedicated, hidden recovery partition that contained a System 7 system folder and a small application that would be set as bootable if the main operating system failed to boot. This application would then run, allowing you to recover your Mac using the system folder inside the recovery partition. This feature was app … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft accidentally cares about its users, releases update that unintentionally deletes Copilot from Windows
It’s rare in this day and age that proprietary operating system vendors like Microsoft and Apple release updates you’re more than happy to install, but considering even a broken clock is right twice a day, we’ve got one for you today. Microsoft released KB5053598 (OS Build 26100.3476) which “addresses security i … ⌘ Read more

Ironclad 0.6 released
It’s been a while, but there’s a new release of Ironclad, the formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel written in SPARK and Ada. Aside from the usual bugfixes, this release moves Ironclad from multiboot to Limine, adds x86_64 ACPI support for poweroff and reboot, improvements to PTY support, the VFS layer, and much more. The easiest way to try out Ironclad is to download Gloire, a distribution that uses Ironclad and the GNU tools. It can be installed in both a virtual machine an … ⌘ Read more

A look at Firefox forks
Mozilla’s actions have been rubbing many Firefox fans the wrong way as of late, and inspiring them to look for alternatives. There are many choices for users who are looking for a browser that isn’t part of the Chrome monoculture but is full-featured and suitable for day-to-day use. For those who are willing to stay in the Firefox “family” there are a number of good options that have taken vastly different approaches. This includes GNU IceCat, Floorp, LibreWolf, and Zen. ↫ Joe Brockm … ⌘ Read more

Google makes Vulkan the official graphics API for Android
Google’s biggest announcement today, at least as it pertains to Android, is that the Vulkan graphics API is now the official graphics API for Android. Vulkan is a modern, low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that provides developers with more direct control over the GPU than older APIs like OpenGL. This increased control allows for significantly improved performance, especially in multi-threaded a … ⌘ Read more

A more robust raw OpenBSD syscall demo
Ted Unangst published dude, where are your syscalls? on flak yesterday, with a neat demonstration of OpenBSD’s pinsyscall security feature, whereby only pre-registered addresses are allowed to make system calls. Whether it strengthens or weakens security is up for debate, but regardless it’s an interesting, low-level programming challenge. The original demo is fragile for multiple reasons, and requires manually locating and entering addresses for each bu … ⌘ Read more

Musk’s Tesla warns Trump’s tariffs and trade wars will harm Tesla
Elon Musk’s Tesla is waving a red flag, warning that Donald Trump’s trade war risks dooming US electric vehicle makers, triggering job losses, and hurting the economy. In an unsigned letter to the US Trade Representative (USTR), Tesla cautioned that Trump’s tariffs could increase costs of manufacturing EVs in the US and forecast that any retaliatory tariffs from other nations could spike costs of export … ⌘ Read more

Haiku gets new malloc implementation, removes Gopher support from its browser
We’ve got the Haiku activity report covering February, and aside from the usual slew of bug fixes and minor improvements, there’s one massive improvement that deserves attention. waddlesplash continued his ongoing memory management improvements, fixes, and cleanups, implementing more cases of resizing (expanding/shrinking) memory areas when there’s a virtual memory reservation a … ⌘ Read more

WinRing0: why Windows is flagging your PC monitoring and fan control apps as a threat
When I checked where Windows Defender had actually detected the threat, it was in the Fan Control app I use to intelligently cool my PC. Windows Defender had broken it, and that’s why my fans were running amok. For others, the threat was detected in Razer Synapse, SteelSeries Engine, OpenRGB, Libre Hardware Monitor, CapFrameX, MSI Afterburner, OmenMon, FanCtrl, Z … ⌘ Read more

KDE splits KWin into kwin_x11 and kwin_wayland
One of the biggest behind-the-scenes changes in the upcoming Plasma 6.4 release is the split of kwin_x11 and kwin_wayland codebases. With this blog post, I would like to delve in what led us to making such a decision and what it means for the future of kwin_x11. ↫ Vlad Zahorodnii For the most part, this change won’t mean much for users of KWin on either Wayland or X11, at least for now. At least for the remainder of the Plasma 6.x life … ⌘ Read more