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Last Notes

2026-07-29 12:27:40 UTC

State of multi-player Wayland
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of attaching multiple mice to one computer, and then having multiple mouse cursors inside of one desktop environment!
I just spent three weeks investigating how well that’s currently supported on Linux & Wayland. Let me tell you what I found! The results are surprisingly cool.
↫ blinry
It shouldn't come as a surprise, though, that a lot o
https://www.osnews.com/story/145621/state-of-multi-player-wayland/
#Wayland

2026-07-27 11:34:30 UTC

Mozilla gives Haiku permission to use the Firefox name
Haiku has a Firefox port, but due to Mozilla's trademark policies, it's actually called Iceweasel. After some back-and-forth with Mozilla, the browser maker has no given Haiku permission to officially use the Firefox name for the port.
But don’t worry, Iceweasel isn’t going anywhere. I plan to maintain both. The idea is to ke
https://www.osnews.com/story/145611/mozilla-gives-haiku-permission-to-use-the-firefox-name/
#Haiku

2026-07-24 23:36:19 UTC

- reply

*meow*

2026-07-23 11:33:42 UTC

Amiga 1000: ten years ahead of its time
We all know the original Amiga was far ahead of its time, and the Amiga really doesn't need more retrospectives and glazing. However, that doesn't mean we don't want more Amiga retrospectives and glazing.
I’m not sure I even saw an Amiga in person until 1987, but I knew just from reading about it that I wanted one. I wasn’t able to make it happen until
https://www.osnews.com/story/145591/amiga-1000-ten-years-ahead-of-its-time/
#AmigaAROS

2026-07-22 12:02:03 UTC

Happy companies are all alike; every unhappy company is unhappy in its own way
Sam Altman seems to be making OpenAI way more non-profit than before:
Even as the AI bubble becomes a mainstream talking point on Wall Street, tech companies continue to peddle the fantasy that AI is poised to become an almost magical money-maker. Case in point, OpenAI wants y
https://www.osnews.com/story/145577/happy-companies-are-all-alike-every-unhappy-company-is-unhappy-in-its-own-way/
#ClownCar

2026-07-20 21:46:35 UTC

Regressive JPEGs
One of the cool features of JPEG files is that there's the option to save low frequency components first. This means that a partially downloaded image will be displayed at low resolution instead of being cut off.
↫ maurycyz.com
Oh I know where this is going...
Doing this, I can get Chrome to render around 90 frames before giving up. Other browsers like Firefox have more patience, but a 90 s
https://www.osnews.com/story/145568/regressive-jpegs/
#MultimediaAV

2026-07-19 20:47:14 UTC

LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without user consent
Well, this is new - but not at all unexpected considering the state of Windows and the wider technology industry. When you connect certain LG monitors to a Windows machine, Windows Update will pull in a bunch of adware promoting antivirus trash. Of course, all done without a
https://www.osnews.com/story/145560/lg-monitors-silently-install-software-through-windows-update-without-user-consent/
#Windows

2026-07-19 19:54:11 UTC

New Intel Itanium emulator boots Itanium version of Windows XP and 2003
It was only a few weeks ago that we got a massively improved Alpha emulator, capable of running VMS, Windows 2000, and Tru64, including X11 support and a variety of other exciting features. Today, we've got another major emulation milestone.
The emulation space is going crazy, after my pre
https://www.osnews.com/story/145555/new-intel-itanium-emulator-boots-itanium-version-of-windows-xp-and-2003/
#Hardware

2026-07-16 21:17:30 UTC

Microsoft releases its weird ’90s IRC client as open source
Out of all the bloody things Microsoft could release as open source, they chose the world's weirdest IRC client they shipped in the late '90s that nobody used or even remembered? What on earth is happening?
Microsoft Comic Chat is a Microsoft-developed Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chat client released in 1996 that
https://www.osnews.com/story/145534/microsoft-releases-its-weird-90s-irc-client-as-open-source/
#Internet

2026-07-14 23:09:59 UTC

Haiku gets NetBSD’s NVMM, beta 6 release planned for August
Haiku has another buy month of development activity to detail, and there's a big ticket item this time, even if the developers themselves don't consider it so.
The thing that should be the biggest news item this month is that the GSoC 2024 work to port “NVMM”, the NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor (which runs on more t
https://www.osnews.com/story/145519/haiku-gets-netbsds-nvmm-beta-6-release-planned-for-august/
#Haiku

2026-07-09 11:18:24 UTC

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2026-07-08 22:28:16 UTC

You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month: here’s how it went
You all donated en masse to have me use Windows 11 for a month, and so I did. What was it like for a long-time Linux user to go back and experience Windows as it exists now? Is it really as bad as we've collectively made it out to be? Did my m
https://www.osnews.com/story/145459/you-paid-me-a-long-time-linux-user-to-use-windows-11-exclusively-for-a-month-heres-how-it-went/
#Windows

2026-07-05 21:29:20 UTC

Review: iodéOS offers a frictionless de-Googled Android experience
Wherever in the world you go, the smartphone landscape is dominated by Android and iOS, and while this has always been problematic, recent events have made the dependency on two American tech giants for what is probably our most personal computing device even more problematic than it already was. We use
https://www.osnews.com/story/145312/review-iodeos-offers-a-frictionless-de-googled-android-experience/
#Android

2026-07-05 20:27:27 UTC

Improved DEC Alpha emulator runs Windows 2000 for Alpha and OpenVMS and Tru64 with X11
Colour me positively surprised, as I had no idea Alpha emulation had progressed this much.
As you might know, I'm involved a bit in the OpenVMS community and the Alpha emulation side via AXPBox. AXPBox (github) is a fork of the es40 alpha emulator by Camiel Va
https://www.osnews.com/story/145445/improved-dec-alpha-emulator-runs-windows-2000-for-alpha-and-openvms-and-tru64-with-x11/
#Hardware

2026-07-05 19:56:33 UTC

Composite video on the NES: why’s it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually kind of an oddball in its expandability and design. But there’s something else about it. The picture is a bit… wobbly. Well, over composite video anyway. Let’s dig in and learn a little bi
https://www.osnews.com/story/145440/composite-video-on-the-nes-whys-it-so-wobbly/
#Games

2026-07-02 23:20:07 UTC

Android is almost dead
The clock is ticking for Android as a (somewhat) open platform.
If you are running Android 8 or higher, a virus has been installed on your device and is silently awaiting remote activation. Over the past few months, devices around the world have been infected with this novel strain, with as many as 4 billion Android handsets and tablets estimated to have already been contaminated, meani
https://www.osnews.com/story/145415/android-is-almost-dead/
#Android

2026-07-01 22:21:33 UTC

European digital ID wallets are a gift to Google and Apple
European governments are rolling out digital identity wallets, which are to be used by citizens to access services, and to verify their age online. As reported by Follow the Money and Android Authority, there is a serious problem with this: these wallets rely on safety services of Google and Apple. These are known as Goog
https://www.osnews.com/story/145405/european-digital-id-wallets-are-a-gift-to-google-and-apple/
#Legal

2026-07-01 22:13:49 UTC

“Apple should end their prohibition on shapes in MacOS app icons”
There's a lot you can say about macOS, but one thing Apple used to be incredibly good at were making beautifully crafted, detailed icons. As with almost every other aspect of macOS, this deteriorated sharply over the years, with the recent macOS releases with Liquid Glass being an absolute low point. Not o
https://www.osnews.com/story/145403/apple-should-end-their-prohibition-on-shapes-in-macos-app-icons/
#macOS

2026-06-29 20:03:20 UTC

The ‘papers, please’ era of the internet will decimate your privacy
Imagine your favorite team just scored an incredible, last-second goal at the World Cup. So you log online to celebrate with other fans. But, using data it’s already collected on you, the social media platform you like to post on wrongly guesses that you’re under 16 so it forces you to go to a third-par
https://www.osnews.com/story/145386/the-papers-please-era-of-the-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy/
#Legal

2026-06-23 20:20:18 UTC

KDE is going to fix network shares
I've had my share of issues with network shares on any operating system, but since I mostly use KDE these days I found this deep dive into how, exactly, network shares work in KDE quite interesting. It turns out that while network shares in KDE's Dolphin mostly work, it does involves a few layers that sometimes don't interact well with each other, leading to really curio
https://www.osnews.com/story/145367/kde-is-going-to-fix-network-shares/
#KDE

2026-06-22 18:49:18 UTC

Xfce’s new Wayland compositor sees first alpha release
The developer working on Xfwl4, the Wayland compositor for Xfce, has published the new compositor's very first alpha release. Considering it's only been six months or so of work, it's impressive to see the effort reach this state already.
The end goal of xfwl4 is to behave as closely as possible to an Xfce desktop running on
https://www.osnews.com/story/145362/xfces-new-wayland-compositor-sees-first-alpha-release/
#Xfce

2026-06-21 18:58:59 UTC

“I stored a website in a favicon”
Every website has a favicon. It's that little icon in your browser tab. Usually you upload it once and then never think about it again. But. A favicon is just an image. An image is just pixels. And pixels are just bytes.
So of course I wondered if I could store something inside one.
↫ Tim Wehrle
I love it when people do something useless just for fun.
https://www.osnews.com/story/145350/i-stored-a-website-in-a-favicon/
#Internet

2026-06-17 22:44:17 UTC

Android 17 released for Pixel devices with very few interesting improvements
Yesterday, Google released Android 17 to Pixel devices, so late last night I updated my Pixel 10 Pro with the intent to write a news item about the release today. The reality is that that I totally forgot I even upgraded last night, because Android 17 is about the biggest nothingburge
https://www.osnews.com/story/145329/android-17-released-for-pixel-devices-with-very-few-interesting-improvements/
#Android

2026-06-16 13:43:50 UTC

FreeBSD 15.1 released
Speaking of FreeBSD, the project released version 15.1 of their operating system today. As it's a point release, it's not full of massive changes, but it still brings the LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers up to Linux 7.0, support for the C23 version of the C has progressed considerably, Unicode has bene updated to version 17.0.0 and CLDR 48, and more.
https://www.osnews.com/story/145318/freebsd-15-1-released/
#FreeBSD

2026-06-15 19:21:43 UTC

Haiku enables AVX512 support
We're a little deep into June already, but it's only now that Haiku published its monthly progress report for May. There's a bunch of fixes for drag-and-drop behaviour in Tracker, AVX512 support can now be enabled thanks to changes to the kernel’s FPU handling, some low-level changes were made for the Rust and Zig compilers, and further improvements were made to the boot process o
https://www.osnews.com/story/145306/haiku-enables-avx512-support/
#Haiku

2026-06-15 14:01:16 UTC

“Your EPUB is fine. Kobo disagrees. Blame Adobe.”
An infuriating story about something most of us don't really stop to think about: e-books and the rendering engines companies and software use to display them.
It’s the year 2026. Thanks to the horrendous [Adobe] RMSDK which Kobo decided to use as their backbone for all book rendering (probably for DRM reasons), a single li
https://www.osnews.com/story/145302/your-epub-is-fine-kobo-disagrees-blame-adobe/
#GeneralDevelopment

2026-06-14 21:36:57 UTC

Running DOS on the Behringer DDX3216 with a DIY BIOS from scratch
In 1994 I got my first computer: an Intel i486 DX2-66 with 4 MB RAM and a 512MB harddisk. The software was IBMs OS/2 and Microsofts Windows 3.11. In the next four years I was upgrading this machine every few months with more RAM (up to 16MB), a CD-ROM-drive and a soundblaster card. So I learned upgradin
https://www.osnews.com/story/145297/running-dos-on-the-behringer-ddx3216-with-a-diy-bios-from-scratch/
#LegacyOSes

2026-06-14 11:34:29 UTC

Swift at Apple: migrating the TrueType hinting interpreter
TrueType is a widely used vector font standard for rendering text in web pages, PDFs, operating systems, and applications. Familiar fonts like Helvetica, Garamond, and Monaco are all built on TrueType outlines. The format specifies a hinting interpreter intended to help outlines rasterize faithfully on low-resolution displ
https://www.osnews.com/story/145294/swift-at-apple-migrating-the-truetype-hinting-interpreter/
#Apple

2026-06-11 17:39:03 UTC

Web browsers on video game consoles
Video game consoles have a long history with web browsers. From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they’ve become a greater and more integrated
https://www.osnews.com/story/145282/web-browsers-on-video-game-consoles/
#Internet

2026-06-11 14:14:01 UTC

MacOS 27 drops Intel support, will be last release with Rosetta 2
With the announcement of an upcoming new macOS release also come the usual changes in which Macs will still be supported. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is an important release in this regard, as it will be the first release of Apple's desktop operating system that will be entirely ARM-only, dropping support for all In
https://www.osnews.com/story/145279/macos-27-drops-intel-support-will-be-last-release-with-rosetta-2/
#macOS

2026-06-10 22:46:35 UTC

Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow
For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo h
https://www.osnews.com/story/145273/google-chrome-is-killing-all-ublock-origin-bypasses-microsoft-edge-opera-to-follow/
#Internet

2026-06-10 19:37:44 UTC

A raycasting first-person shooter written in COBOL
On a related note, what about a raycasting first-person shooter written in... COBOL?
Can you think of a better programming language than COBOL to implement an FPS from scratch? I know I can't, so buckle up and enjoy what can only be described as an out-of-body experience for COBOL enthusiasts as I set out to make a Wolfenstein3D-like
https://www.osnews.com/story/145271/a-raycasting-first-person-shooter-written-in-cobol/
#Games

2026-06-03 22:29:58 UTC

Microsoft brings coreutils to Windows
At its Build conference, Microsoft announced coreutils for Windows.
Coreutils for Windows is a Microsoft-maintained set of UNIX-style command-line utilities that run natively on Windows — the same commands and pipelines you use on Linux, macOS, and WSL. It ships as a single multi-call binary that exposes each utility under its standard name (cat.exe, grep.e
https://www.osnews.com/story/145206/microsoft-brings-coreutils-to-windows/
#Windows

2026-05-21 18:52:58 UTC

Firefox, Vivaldi unveil their UI overhauls
Two popular web browser are overhauling their user interface, and the first to actually ship its new version is Vivaldi. Version 8.0 of this Chromium-based browser completely overhauls its UI, but retains its extensive customisation options, including the option to go back to the old look and feel if the new one doesn't float your boat. I wonder if th
https://www.osnews.com/story/145035/firefox-vivaldi-unveil-their-ui-overhauls/
#Internet

2026-05-03 20:15:12 UTC

GNOME is good, actually
While I'm normally a KDE user, I do keep close tabs on various other desktop environments, and install and set them up every now and then to see how they're fairing, what improvements they've made, and ultimately, if my preference for KDE is still warranted. This usually means setting up a nice OpenBSD installation for Xfce, Fedora for GNOME, and less often others for some of the more niche
https://www.osnews.com/story/144862/gnome-is-good-actually/
#Gnome

2026-05-03 17:46:21 UTC

How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?
To assess how small a macOS VM could be, I ran the same VM of macOS 26.4.1 on progressively smaller CPU core and memory allocations, using my virtualiser Viable. The VM’s display window was set to a standard 1600 x 1000, and I ran Safari through its paces and performed some lightweight everyday tasks, including Storage analysis in Setting
https://www.osnews.com/story/144876/how-fast-is-a-macos-vm-and-how-small-could-it-be/
#macOS

2026-04-30 19:30:31 UTC

Email is crazy
Email is like those creaking old Terminators from the ’70s which continue to function without complaining. Designed for a world that doesn’t exist anymore, it has optional encryption, no built-in auth, three⁺ retrofitted security layers bolted on top, an unstandardized filtering layer and many more quirks. Yet billions of emails arrive correctly every single day.
Email is not elegant but nonetheless it
https://www.osnews.com/story/144856/email-is-crazy/
#Internet

2026-04-30 11:04:46 UTC

The day I logged 1 in every 2000 public IPv4: visualizing the AI scraper DDoS
What if you run a few online services for you and your friends, like a small git instance and a grocery list service, but you get absolutely hammered by "AI" scrapers?
I cannot impress upon you, reader, that this is not only an attack that is coordinated, it is an attack that is
https://www.osnews.com/story/144851/the-day-i-logged-1-in-every-2000-public-ipv4-visualizing-the-ai-scraper-ddos/
#ClownCar

2026-04-29 20:55:55 UTC

Earliest 86-DOS and PC-DOS code released as open source
Microsoft is continuing its efforts to release early versions of DOS as open source, and today we've got a special one.
We’re stoked today to showcase some newly available source code materials that provide an even earlier look into the development of PC-DOS 1.00, the first release of DOS for the IBM PC. A dedicate
https://www.osnews.com/story/144849/earliest-86-dos-and-pc-dos-code-released-as-open-source/
#RetroComputing

2026-04-29 20:44:49 UTC

Apple gives up on Vision Pro, disbands Vision Pro team
When Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, almost three (!) years ago, I concluded:
If there’s one company that can convince people to spend $3500 to strap an isolating dystopian glowing robot mask onto their faces it’s Apple, but I still have a hard time believing this is what people want.
↫ Thom Holwerda at OSNews (quoting myself i
https://www.osnews.com/story/144847/apple-gives-up-on-vision-pro-disbands-vision-pro-team/
#Apple

2026-04-28 20:54:18 UTC

Apple wants to kill your Time Capsule, but they run NetBSD so they can’t
It seems like Apple is finally going to remove support for AFP from macOS, twelve years after first moving from AFP to SMB for its default network file-sharing technology. This change shouldn't impact most people, as it's highly unlikely you're using AFP for anything in 2026. Still, there is on
https://www.osnews.com/story/144845/apple-wants-to-kill-your-time-capsule-but-they-run-netbsd-so-they-cant/
#Apple

2026-04-27 21:47:55 UTC

Dillo 3.3.0 released
Dillo is an amazing web browser for those of us who want their web browsing experience to be calmer and less flashing. Dillo also happens to be a very UNIX-y browser, and their latest release, 3.3.0, underlines that.
A new dilloc program is now available to control Dillo from the command line or from a script. It searches for Dillo by the PID in the DILLO_PID environment variable or for a
https://www.osnews.com/story/144838/dillo-3-3-0-released/
#Internet

2026-04-27 21:34:36 UTC

Ubuntu is going to integrate “AI”, but Canonical remains vague about the how and why
Ubuntu, being one of the more commercial Linux distributions, was always going to jump on the "AI" bandwagon, and Jon Seager, Canonical's VP Engineering, published a blog post with more details.
Throughout 2026 we’ll be working on enabling access to frontier AI fo
https://www.osnews.com/story/144833/ubuntu-is-going-to-integrate-ai-but-canonical-remains-vague-about-the-how-and-why/
#Ubuntu

2026-04-24 23:07:27 UTC

If 64bit Windows 11 contains a copy of 32bit explorer.exe, could you run it as its shell?
Raymond Chen published a blog post about how a crappy uninstaller on Windows caused a mysterious spike in the number of Explorer (Windows' graphical shell) crashes. It turns out the buggy uninstaller caused repeated crashes in the 32bit version of Explorer on 6
https://www.osnews.com/story/144829/if-64bit-windows-11-contains-a-copy-of-32bit-explorer-exe-could-you-run-it-as-its-shell/
#Windows

2026-04-24 22:42:48 UTC

8087 emulation on 8086 systems
Not too long ago I had a need and an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with the mechanism used for software emulation of the 8087 FPU on 8086/8088 machines.
↫ Michal Necasek
Look, when a Michal Necasek article starts out like this, you know you're in for a learnin' ol' time.
The 8087 was a floating-point coprocessor for the 8086 and 8088 processors, since back in those e
https://www.osnews.com/story/144827/8087-emulation-on-8086-systems/
#Intel

2026-04-24 20:24:55 UTC

How hard is it to open a file?
Sebastian Wick has a great explanation of why opening files - programmatically - is a lot more complex and fraught with dangers than you might think it is.
It’s a question I had to ask myself multiple times over the last few months. Depending on the context the answer can be:
very simple, just call the standard library function
extremely hard, don’t trust a
https://www.osnews.com/story/144825/how-hard-is-it-to-open-a-file/
#PrivacySecurity

2026-04-24 20:13:54 UTC

AI as a fascist artifact
In that reading „AI“ is a machine for the creation of epistemic injustice and the replacement of truth with what a tech elite wants it to be in order to control the population. This is a Fascist project that not so subtly aligns with Fascism’s totalitarian will to power and control as well as its reliance in replacing reasoning and debate with belief in power and the leader.
↫ Jür
https://www.osnews.com/story/144823/ai-as-a-fascist-artifact/
#Technofascism

2026-04-23 19:33:18 UTC

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon released
I'm not sure many OSNews readers still use Ubuntu as their operating system of choice, and from the release announcement of today's Ubuntu 26.04 it's clear why that's the case.
Resolute Raccoon builds on the resilience-focused improvements introduced in interim releases, with TPM-backed full-disk encryption, improved support for application permiss
https://www.osnews.com/story/144821/ubuntu-26-04-lts-resolute-raccoon-released/
#Ubuntu

2026-04-22 20:47:07 UTC

Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux
You can find beauty in the oddest of places.
WSL9x runs a modern Linux kernel (6.19 at time of writing) cooperatively inside the Windows 9x kernel, enabling users to take advantage of the full suite of capabilities of both operating systems at the same time, including paging, memory protection, and pre-emptive scheduling. Run all your favourite applications side by side -
https://www.osnews.com/story/144819/windows-9x-subsystem-for-linux/
#Linux

2026-04-22 20:33:08 UTC

Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU92 released
Despite years of apparent stagnation and reported mass layoffs, it seems the Solaris team at Oracle has found somewhat of a renewed stride recently. Both branches of Solaris - the one for paying customers (SRU) and the free one for enthusiasts (CBE) - are receiving regular updates again, and there seems to be a more concerted effort to let the outside world know, too
https://www.osnews.com/story/144817/oracle-solaris-11-4-sru92-released/
#Solaris

2026-04-20 22:05:01 UTC

Some tech company to replace its CEO
I need to post about this because if I don't, people will get mad.
Cook will continue on as Apple CEO through the summer, with Ternus set to join Apple's Board of Directors and take over as CEO on September 1, 2026. Cook is going to transition to chairman of the board at Apple, and he will "assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with pol
https://www.osnews.com/story/144815/some-tech-company-to-replace-its-ceo/
#Apple

2026-04-20 21:37:09 UTC

Google to punish back button hijacking
Have you ever tried clicking the back button in your browser, only to realise the website you're on somehow doesn't allow that? Out of all the millions of annoyances on the web, Google has decided to finally address this one: they're going to punish the search rankings of websites that use this back button hijacking.
Pages that are engaging in back butto
https://www.osnews.com/story/144813/google-to-punish-back-button-hijacking/
#Internet

2026-04-20 19:57:20 UTC

LXQt 2.4.0 released
LXQt, the desktop environment which is effectively to KDE what Xfce is to GNOME, has released version 2.4.0. Quite a few changes in this release are further refinements and fixes related to LXQt's adoption of Wayland, but there are also a ton of small fixes, improvements, and small new features that have nothing to do with Wayland at all. There are also a few layout cleanups to make s
https://www.osnews.com/story/144809/lxqt-2-4-0-released/
#DesktopEnvironments

2026-04-16 20:09:50 UTC

Nationwide bill to put age verification in operating systems introduced in the US
The title of my article on age verification in Linux and other operating systems had a "for now" added for a reason, and here we are, with two members of the US Congress introducing a bill to add age verification to operating systems. The text of the proposed bill was only pub
https://www.osnews.com/story/144803/nationwide-bill-to-put-age-verification-in-operating-systems-introduced-in-the-us/
#Legal

2026-04-15 20:18:33 UTC

Tribblix m34 for SPARC released
Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, doesn't only support x86. It also has a branch for SPARC, which tends to run behind its x86 counterpart a little bit and has a few other limitations related to the fact SPARC is effectively no longer being developed. The Tribblix SPARC branch has been updated, and now roughly matches
https://www.osnews.com/story/144801/tribblix-m34-for-sparc-released/
#Solaris

2026-04-15 15:11:05 UTC

Haiku on ARM64 boots to desktop in QEMU
Another Haiku monthly activity report, but this time around, there's actually a big ticket item. Haiku has been in a pretty solid and stable state for a while now, so the activity reports have been dominated by fairly small, obscure changes, but during March a major milestone was reached for the ARM64 port.
smrobtzz contributed the bulk of the work, inclu
https://www.osnews.com/story/144799/haiku-on-arm64-boots-to-desktop-in-qemu/
#Haiku

2026-04-15 14:00:51 UTC

Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16
The editor in chief of this blog was born in 2004. She uses the 1997 window manager, Enlightenment E16, daily. In this article, I describe the process of fixing a show-stopping, rare bug that dates back to 2006 in the codebase. Surprisingly, the issue has roots in a faulty implementation of Newton’s algorithm.
↫ Kamila Szewczyk
I'
https://www.osnews.com/story/144797/fixing-a-20-year-old-bug-in-enlightenment-e16/
#DesktopEnvironments

2026-04-15 13:52:07 UTC

Let sleeping CPUs lie — S0ix
Modern laptops promise a kind of magic. Shut the lid or press the sleep button, toss it in a backpack, and hours, days, or weeks later, it should wake up as if nothing happened with little to no battery drain. This sounds like a fairly trivial operation — y’know, you’re literally just asking for the computer to do nothing — but in that quiet moment when the fans whir down, the
https://www.osnews.com/story/144795/let-sleeping-cpus-lie-s0ix/
#InTheNews

2026-04-14 21:28:27 UTC

Microsoft isn’t removing Copilot from Windows 11, it’s just renaming it
A few weeks ago, Microsoft made some concrete promises about fixing and improving Windows, and among them was removing useless "AI" integrations. Applications like Notepad, Snipping Tool, and others would see their "AI" features removed. Well, it turns out Microsoft employs a very fringe defin
https://www.osnews.com/story/144793/microsoft-isnt-removing-copilot-from-windows-11-its-just-renaming-it/
#Windows

2026-04-13 13:02:45 UTC

Scientists invented an obviously fake illness, and “AI” spread it like truth within weeks
Ever heard of a condition called bixonimania? Did you search the internet or ask your "AI" girlfriend about some symptoms you were experiencing, and this was its answer? Well...
The condition doesn’t appear in the standard medical literature — because i
https://www.osnews.com/story/144787/scientists-invented-an-obviously-fake-illness-and-ai-spread-it-like-truth-within-weeks/
#ClownCar

2026-04-13 12:19:24 UTC

Linux 7.0 released
Version 7.0 of the Linux kernel has been released, marking the arbitrary end of the 6.x series.
Significant changes in this release include the removal of the "experimental" status for Rust code, a new filtering mechanism for io_uring operations, a switch to lazy preemption by default in the CPU scheduler, support for time-slice extension, the nullfs filesystem, self-healing support for the XFS f
https://www.osnews.com/story/144785/linux-7-0-released/
#Linux

2026-04-10 20:04:29 UTC

The disturbing white paper Red Hat is trying to erase from the internet
It shouldn't be a surprise that companies - and for our field, technology companies specifically - working with the defense industry tends to raise eyebrows. With things like the genocide in Gaza, the threats of genocide and war crimes against Iran, the mass murder in Lebanon, it's no surprise t
https://www.osnews.com/story/144776/the-disturbing-white-paper-red-hat-is-trying-to-erase-from-the-internet/
#RedHat

2026-04-10 14:41:41 UTC

FreeBSD works best on one of these laptops
If you want to run FreeBSD on a laptop, you're often yanked back to the Linux world of 20 years ago, with many components and parts not working and other issues such as sleep and wake problems. FreeBSD has been hard at work improving the experience of using FreeBSD on laptops, and now this has resulted in a list of laptops which work effortlessly with
https://www.osnews.com/story/144774/freebsd-works-best-on-one-of-these-laptops/
#FreeBSD

2026-04-10 13:27:01 UTC

Fixing AMDGPU’s VRAM management for low-end GPUs
It may sound unbelievable to some, but not everyone has a datacenter beast with 128GB of VRAM shoved in their desktop PCs. Around the world people tell the tale of a particularly fierce group of Linux gamers: Those who dare attempt to play games with only 8 gigabytes of VRAM, or even less. Truly, it takes exceedingly strong resilience and d
https://www.osnews.com/story/144770/fixing-amdgpus-vram-management-for-low-end-gpus/
#Linux

2026-04-09 23:06:09 UTC

Why do Macs ask you to press random keys when connecting a new keyboard?
You might have seen this, one of the strangest and most primitive experiences in macOS, where you’re asked to press keys next to left Shift and right Shift, whatever they might be.
Perhaps I can explain.
↫ Marcin Wichary
It seems pretty obvious to me that's what it was for, but I guess man
https://www.osnews.com/story/144766/why-do-macs-ask-you-to-press-random-keys-when-connecting-a-new-keyboard/
#macOS

2026-04-09 22:49:26 UTC

USB for software developers
This post aims to be a high level introduction to using USB for people who may not have worked with Hardware too much yet and just want to use the technology. There are amazing resources out there such as USB in a NutShell that go into a lot of detail about how USB precisely works (check them out if you want more information), they are however not really approachable fo
https://www.osnews.com/story/144764/usb-for-software-developers/
#GeneralDevelopment

2026-04-09 22:44:31 UTC

Redox sees another months of improvements
The months keep coming, and thus, the monthly progress reports keep coming, too, for Redox, the new general purpose operating system written in Rust. This past month, there's been considerable graphics improvements, better deadlock detection in the kernel, improved Unicode support thanks to switching over to ncurses library variant with Unicode support,
https://www.osnews.com/story/144762/redox-sees-another-months-of-improvements/
#RedoxOS

2026-04-08 21:10:33 UTC

Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah ported to Nintendo Wii
Since its launch in 2007, the Wii has seen several operating systems ported to it: Linux, NetBSD, and most-recently, Windows NT. Today, Mac OS X joins that list.
In this post, I’ll share how I ported the first version of Mac OS X, 10.0 Cheetah, to the Nintendo Wii. If you’re not an operating systems expert or low-level engineer, you’re in good co
https://www.osnews.com/story/144756/mac-os-x-10-0-cheetah-ported-to-nintendo-wii/
#macOS

2026-04-07 14:01:54 UTC

Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system
From 2024, but still accurate and interesting:
Plan 9 is unique in this sense that everything the system needs is covered by the base install. This includes the compilers, graphical environment, window manager, text editors, ssh client, torrent client, web server, and the list goes on. Nearly everything a user can do with the system is avai
https://www.osnews.com/story/144752/plan-9-is-a-uniquely-complete-operating-system/
#OSNews

2026-04-07 13:33:24 UTC

Anos: a hobby microkernel operating system written in C
Anos is a modern, opinionated, non-POSIX operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU-Linux) for x86_64 PCs and RISC-V machines.
Anos currently comprises the STAGE3 microkernel, SYSTEM user-mode supervisor, and a base set of servers implementing the base of the operating system. There is a (WIP) too
https://www.osnews.com/story/144750/anos-a-hobby-microkernel-operating-system-written-in-c/
#OSNews

2026-04-07 13:16:24 UTC

The 499th patch for 2.11BSD released
This year sees 35 years since 2.11BSD was announced on March 14, 1991 - itself a slightly late celebration of 20 years of the PDP-11 - and January 2026 brought what looks to be the venerable 16-bit OS's biggest ever patch!
Much of the 1.3 MB size is due to Anders Magnusson, well-known for his work on NetBSD and the Portable C Compiler. Since 2.11BSD's stdio
https://www.osnews.com/story/144748/the-499th-patch-for-2-11bsd-released/
#BSDDarwin

2026-04-06 23:32:03 UTC

KDE is bringing back its classic Oxygen and Air themes
Anyone remember the KDE 4.0 themes Oxygen and Air? Well, several KDE developers have been working tirelessly to bring them back, which means they're patching it up, fixing bugs, and generally making these classic themes work well in the current releases of KDE Plasma 6.
The last post regarding work on fixing Oxygen was a month
https://www.osnews.com/story/144745/kde-is-bringing-back-its-classic-oxygen-and-air-themes/
#KDE

2026-04-06 19:48:13 UTC

“I used AI. It worked. I hated it.”
This is a great post, but obviously it hasn't convinced me:
The folks waving their arms and yelling about recent models' capabilities have a point: the thing works. This project finished in three weeks. Compare that to Ringspace, a similarly-sized project that took me about six months of nights and early mornings to complete, while not doing my day jo
https://www.osnews.com/story/144743/i-used-ai-it-worked-i-hated-it/
#GeneralDevelopment

2026-04-05 13:59:08 UTC

Adobe secretly modifies your hosts file for the stupidest reason
If you're using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.
I found that in my hosts file the other day too, and I investigated to find why they're doing
https://www.osnews.com/story/144737/adobe-secretly-modifies-your-hosts-file-for-the-stupidest-reason/
#ClownCar

2026-04-04 07:32:46 UTC

TinyOS: ultra-lightweight RTOS for IoT devices
An ultra-lightweight real-time operating system for resource-constrained IoT and embedded devices. Kernel footprint under 10 KB, 2 KB minimum RAM, preemptive priority-based scheduling.
↫ TinyOS GitHub page
Written in C, open source, and supports ARM and RISC-V.
https://www.osnews.com/story/144735/tinyos-ultra-lightweight-rtos-for-iot-devices/
#OSNews

2026-04-04 07:28:48 UTC

Redox gets new CPU scheduler
Another major improvement in Redox: a brand new scheduler which improves performance under load considerably.
We have replaced the legacy Round Robin scheduler with a Deficit Weighted Round Robin scheduler. Due to this, we finally have a way of assigning different priorities to our Process contexts. When running under light load, you may not notice any difference, but under
https://www.osnews.com/story/144733/redox-gets-new-cpu-scheduler/
#RedoxOS

2026-04-04 07:21:49 UTC

Open source office suites erupt in forking and licensing drama
You'd think if there was one corner of the open source world where you wouldn't find drama it'd be open source office suites, but it turns out we could not have been more wrong. First, there's The Document Foundation, stewards of LibreOffice, ejecting a ton of LibreOffice contributors.
In the ongoing saga of
https://www.osnews.com/story/144731/open-source-office-suites-erupt-in-forking-and-licensing-drama/
#Office

2026-04-04 06:42:47 UTC

How Microsoft vaporized a trillion dollars
This is the first of a series of articles in which you will learn about what may be one of the silliest, most preventable, and most costly mishaps of the 21st century, where Microsoft all but lost OpenAI, its largest customer, and the trust of the US government.
↫ Axel Rietschin
It won't take long into this series of articles before you start won
https://www.osnews.com/story/144729/how-microsoft-vaporized-a-trillion-dollars/
#Microsoft

2026-04-03 20:06:05 UTC

Big-endian testing with QEMU
I assume I don't have to explain the difference between big-endian and little-endian systems to the average OSNews reader, and while most systems are either dual-endian or (most likely) little-endian, it's still good practice to make sure your code works on both. If you don't have a big-endian system, though, how do you do that?
When programming, it is still impor
https://www.osnews.com/story/144727/big-endian-testing-with-qemu/
#GeneralDevelopment

2026-04-01 19:43:22 UTC

How to turn anything into a router
I don’t like to cover “current events” very much, but the American government just revealed a truly bewildering policy effectively banning import of new consumer router models. This is ridiculous for many reasons, but if this does indeed come to pass it may be beneficial to learn how to “homebrew” a router.
Fortunately, you can make a router out of basically anyt
https://www.osnews.com/story/144706/how-to-turn-anything-into-a-router/
#Internet

2026-03-31 14:45:45 UTC

Trans rights are very obviously human rights. As long as fascists, nazis, and other extremists keep denying these rights, Transgender Day of Visibility really should be a riot.
I published this permanent page on OSNews a year or so ago, and sadly, it bears repeating as things have only gotten worse:
https://www.osnews.com/trans-rights-are-human-rights/

2026-03-30 21:14:43 UTC

Microsoft Copilot is now injecting ads into pull requests on GitHub
Why do so many people keep falling for the same trick over and over again?
With an over $400 billion gap between the money invested in AI data centers and the actual revenue these products generate, Silicon Valley slowly returned to the tested and trusted playbook: advertising.
Now, ads are sta
https://www.osnews.com/story/144703/microsoft-copilot-is-now-injecting-ads-into-pull-requests-on-github/
#ClownCar

2026-03-30 21:02:29 UTC

Capability-based security for Redox: namespace and CWD as capabilities
By reimplementing these features using capabilities, we made the kernel simpler by moving complex scheme and namespace management out of it which improved security and stability by reducing the attack surface and possible bugs. At the same time, we gained a means to support more sandboxing feature
https://www.osnews.com/story/144701/capability-based-security-for-redox-namespace-and-cwd-as-capabilities/
#RedoxOS

2026-03-30 20:35:40 UTC

The curious case of retro demo scene graphics
Of course, it was only a matter of time before the time-honoured tradition of the demoscene also got infected by "AI".
For me personally, generative AI ruins much of the fun. I still enjoy creating pixel art and making little animations and demos. My own creative process remains satisfying as an isolated activity. Alas, obvious AI generated
https://www.osnews.com/story/144699/the-curious-case-of-retro-demo-scene-graphics/
#Graphics

2026-03-27 19:40:26 UTC

Running a Plan 9 network on OpenBSD
This guide describes how you can install a Plan 9 network on an OpenBSD machine (it will probably work on any unix machine though). The authentication service (called "authsrv" on Plan 9) is provided by a unix version: authsrv9. The file service is provided by a program called "u9fs". It comes with Plan 9. Both run from inetd. The (diskless) cpu server is provided
https://www.osnews.com/story/144695/running-a-plan-9-network-on-openbsd/
#OpenBSD

2026-03-27 19:30:31 UTC

Will “AI” chatbots be the tobacco of the future?
Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”
Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable t
https://www.osnews.com/story/144693/will-ai-chatbots-be-the-tobacco-of-the-future/
#Technofascism

2026-03-27 19:18:29 UTC

Microsoft removes trust for drivers signed with the cross-signed driver program
Today, we’re excited to announce a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to Windows security and system reliability: the removal of trust for all kernel drivers signed by the deprecated cross-signed root program. This update will help protect our customers by ensu
https://www.osnews.com/story/144691/microsoft-removes-trust-for-drivers-signed-with-the-cross-signed-driver-program/
#Windows

2026-03-26 23:01:51 UTC

Windows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older version
I'll never grow tired of reading about the crazy tricks the Windows 95 development team employed to make the user experience as seamless as they could given the constraints they were dealing with. During the 16bit Windows days, application installers could replace system c
https://www.osnews.com/story/144687/windows-95-defenses-against-installers-that-overwrite-a-file-with-an-older-version/
#Windows

2026-03-26 22:41:31 UTC

US regulator bans imports of new foreign-made routers, citing security concerns
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it was banning the import of all new foreign-made consumer routers, the latest crackdown on Chinese-made electronic gear over ‌security concerns.
China is estimated to control at least 60% of the U.S. market for home rou
https://www.osnews.com/story/144685/us-regulator-bans-imports-of-new-foreign-made-routers-citing-security-concerns/
#Legal

2026-03-26 22:34:17 UTC

Apple discontinues the Mac Pro with no plans for future hardware
It’s the end of an era: Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It has been removed from Apple’s website as of Thursday afternoon. The “buy” page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed.
Apple has also conf
https://www.osnews.com/story/144682/apple-discontinues-the-mac-pro-with-no-plans-for-future-hardware/
#Apple

2026-03-25 21:07:38 UTC

The reports of age verification in Linux are greatly exaggerated, for now
Several US states, the country of Brazil, and I'm sure other places in the world have enacted or are planning to enact laws that would place the burden of age verification of users on the shoulders of operating system makers. The legal landscape is quite fragmented at this point, and there's n
https://www.osnews.com/story/144653/the-reports-of-age-verification-in-linux-are-greatly-exaggerated-for-now/
#Legal

2026-03-23 15:13:43 UTC

Windows native application development is a mess
Usually, when developers or programmers write articles about their experiences developing for a platform they have little to no experience with, the end result usually comes down to "they do things differently, therefor it is bad actually", which is deeply unhelpful. This article, though, is from a longtime Windows user and developer, but
https://www.osnews.com/story/144650/windows-native-application-development-is-a-mess/
#Windows

2026-03-23 14:52:23 UTC

Java Sun SPOTs (Small Programable Object Technology)
These were Sun microcontrollers that run Squawk Java ME directly on metal with gc and all the bells and whistles, created by Sun Microsystems in 2005.
The feature mesh networking and tcp/ip and multitasking. Even the drivers are java just like Java OS.
They run a command and control server by default and there’s graphical
https://www.osnews.com/story/144648/java-sun-spots-small-programable-object-technology/
#OracleAndSUN

2026-03-23 14:44:12 UTC

The OpenBSD init system and boot process
In recent weeks, systemd has both embraced slopcoding and laid the groundwork for age verification built right into systemd-based Linux distributions, there's definitely been an uptick in people talking about alternative init systems. If you want to gain understanding in a rather classic init system, OpenBSD's is a great place to start.
OpenBSD has a
https://www.osnews.com/story/144646/the-openbsd-init-system-and-boot-process/
#OpenBSD

2026-03-20 23:02:41 UTC

Microsoft finally makes a few concrete promises about Windows 11 improvements
Earlier this year, Microsoft openly acknowledged the sorry state of Windows 11, and made vague promises about possible improvements somewhere in the near future, but stayed away from making any concrete promises. Today, the company published a blog post with some more details, inclu
https://www.osnews.com/story/144638/microsoft-finally-makes-a-few-concrete-promises-about-windows-11-improvements/
#Windows

2026-03-19 23:51:43 UTC

Google to introduce overly onerous hoops to prevent “sideloading”
When Google said they were going to require verification from every single Android developer that would end the ability to install applications from outside of the Play Store (commonly wrongfully referred to as "sideloading"), it caused quite a backlash. The company then backtracked a little bit, and sai
https://www.osnews.com/story/144635/google-to-introduce-overly-onerous-hoops-to-prevent-sideloading/
#Android

2026-03-19 21:10:31 UTC

You can make Linux syscalls in a Windows application, apparently
What happens if you make a Linux syscall in a Windows application?
So yeah, you can make Linux syscalls from Windows programs, as long as they're running under Wine. Totally useless, but the fact that such a Frankenstein monster of a program could exist is funny to me.
↫ nicebyte at gpfault.net
https://www.osnews.com/story/144633/you-can-make-linux-syscalls-in-a-windows-application-apparently/
#GeneralDevelopment

2026-03-18 22:23:46 UTC

GNOME 50 released
The GNOME team has released GNOME 50, the latest version of what is probably the most popular open source desktop environment. It brings fine-grained parental controls, and the groundwork for web filtering so that in future releases, parents and guardians can set content filters for children. Our own kids are still way too young to have access to computers and the internet, but I'm not sure I'll ever r
https://www.osnews.com/story/144629/gnome-50-released/
#Gnome

2026-03-18 21:14:57 UTC

Introducing Duranium: an immutable variant of postmarketOS
PosrtmarketOS, the Linux 'distribution' for mobile devices, now also has an immutable variant, called Duranium.
Duranium is an immutable variant of postmarketOS, built around the idea that your device should just work, and keep working. You shouldn't need to know what a terminal is to keep your device running.
"Imm
https://www.osnews.com/story/144627/introducing-duranium-an-immutable-variant-of-postmarketos/
#Mobile

2026-03-18 21:01:29 UTC

Sudo ported to DOS
DOS didn't have sudo yet. This gross oversight has been addressed.
SUDO examines the environment for the COMSPEC variable to find the default command interpreter, falling back to C:\COMMAND.COM if not set. The interpreter is then executed in unprotected real mode for full privileges.
↫ SUDO for DOS' Codeberg page
A vital tool, for sure.
https://www.osnews.com/story/144625/sudo-ported-to-dos/
#RetroComputing