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This year, 2025, the KDE Community held its yearly conference in Berlin, Germany. On the way I reinstalled FreeBSD on my Frame.work 13 laptop in another attempt to get KDE Plasma 6 Wayland working. Short story:yes, KDE Plasma 6 Wayland on FreeBSD works. Adriaan de Groot Adriaan de Groot is a long-time KDE developer and FreeBSD package maintainer, and he's published a short but detailed guide on setting up a KDE Plasma desktop on FreeBSD using Wayland instead of X11. With the Linux world slowly but finally leaving X11 behind, the BSD world really has little choice but to follow, especially if they want to continue offering the two major desktop environments. Most of KDE and GNOME are focused on Linux, and the BSDs have always kind of tagged along for the ride, and over the coming years that's going to mean they'll have to invest more in making Wayland run comfortably on BSD. Of course, the other option would be the KDE and GNOME experience on the BSDs slowly degrading over time, but I think especially FreeBSD is keen to avoid that fate, while OpenBSD and NetBSD seem a bit more hands-off in the desktop space. FreeBSD is investing heavily in its usability as a desktop operating system, and that's simply going to mean getting Wayland support up to snuff. Not only will KDE and GNOME slowly depend more and more on Wayland, Xorg itself will also become less maintained than it already is. Sometimes, the current just takes you where it's going.

If you need to reinstall Windows 11, you're most likely going to need to do a hell of a lot of post-install work to make Windows 11 somewhat manageable. There's countless tools to make this process a little bit easier, and one of them, Flyoobe, just got a major update to aid in removing all the AI" nonsense Microsoft is forcing down the throats of its users. Starting off with version 1.7, people who hate the way Microsoft has been stuffing AI features into Windows 11 will be pleased to know that there is an OOBE view that allows you to discover and disable all AI and Copilot features after the installation of the OS. Moreover, the OOBE view that handles bloat removal has been enhanced too, and now allows presets ranging from Minimal to Full, along with the ability to load custom presets from GitHub. Usama Jawad at Neowin If Microsoft actually cared about the users of its Windows operating system, they would simply include an advanced options view during installation, in which you could customise your installation. Instead, users have to rely on what are essentially hacks to get to a point where their operating system installation can serve their needs, which is batshit insane to me. I'm glad projects like Flyoobe exists, but they shouldn't have to.

Three years ago, the incredibly popular Android launcher Nova Launcher was acquired by Branch, a mobile links and analytics company. Understandably, people were worried this would spell the end of the launcher, as it would certainly become a vessel for tracking and mobile advertising. Weirdly enough, this never actually happened - instead, Nova just kind of fizzled out. First, virtually the entire Nova team was laid off two years after the acquisition, save for Nova's original founder, Kevin Barry, who was not let go. Development had come to a halt already at that point, and ever since, it's been quiet. Until this weekend. Barry posted on his blog that he left Branch, and thus is no longer working on Nova Launcher. You'd think this would be the final nail in the coffin for this once rather ubiquitous launcher, but that's actually not the case, as Barry explains. For the past several months I have been preparing the Open Source release of Nova Launcher. This work included cleaning up the codebase, reviewing licenses, removing or replacing proprietary code, and coordinating with legal to ensure a proper release. When Branch acquired Nova in 2022, Branch then-CEO and founder Alex Austin made several public commitments to the community about Nova's future, including statements about open sourcing: However I was ultimately asked to stop working on Nova Launcher and the open sourcing effort. Kevin Barry Basically, one of the reasons Barry felt comfortable selling Nova to Branch was a contractual agreement - backed up by public statements from then-CEO of Branch, Alex Austin - that if Barry were to leave Branch, he would be allowed to release Nova as open source. It seems that this promise is not being honoured by the new CEO, for unclear reasons, leaving what was arguably one of the best launchers for Android in limbo. Nobody's working on it anymore, and a contractual agreement is not being honoured, for whatever reason. One of the people who used to work on Nova but was part of that first round of layoffs, Cliff Wade, is now trying to raise awareness of this stalemate. He's trying to talk to former colleagues at Branch, and trying to put some pressure on Branch to honour their contractual obligations and public promises. I'm fully behind this effort, because up until the institutional neglect set in, Nova was one of the very best Android applications, clearly made by people who truly understood what Android enthusiasts wanted out of a highly configurable launcher. Branch needs to honour its word, and allow Barry to continue preparing the release of Nova as open source. Head on over to Branch's contact page, and let them know they need to release Nova as open source - in a polite, constructive manner, of course. The people working at Branch are just ordinary folk like you and I, and I will not stand for anyone being aggressive, insulting, or otherwise committing harassment towards Branch and its employees.

Akademy 2025, KDE's yearly developer and community event, this year held in Berlin, Germany. Amid all the various talks and informal meetings, the KDE project also officially unveiled the first alpha release of KDE Linux, a project they've been working on for a while now. KDE Linux will serve as a reference implementation" of KDE Plasma and official KDE applications, for use by developers and regular users alike. KDE Linux will have a quick update cycle, to ensure its users always have the latest releases of KDE Plasma and various other KDE applications and related technologies. It may, however, not be as optimised as other KDE distributions, and the intent of KDE Linux is not to compete with or replace other distributions. The goal is to show other distributions how KDE itself intends for its software to be presented. So, what is KDE Linux based on? KDE Linux is an immutable base OS" Linux distro with a core created using Arch Linux packages - but it should not be considered part of the Arch family of distributions. Some very fundamental Arch technologies (like the pacman package manager!) have been removed. KDE software is then built on top of this core using KDE's homegrown development tools and Flatpak. KDE Linux leans on Systemd for a great deal of functionality. Updates are atomic and image-based, with the last 5 OS images cached on disk for safety. Only the Wayland session is supported. Apps primarily come from Flatpak and Snap. KDE Linux' website The overview of the KDE Linux' architecture provides some more details. I like that it eschews GRUB in favour of systemd-boot (GRUB should be retired in this, the year of our lord 2025) and relies on systemd-sysupdate for operating system updates. Of note is that the mention of Snap is merely for convenience's sake as an option; Snap is not a requirement, nor are any Snap packages installed by default. Since this is the first alpha release, expect bugs and issues, and don't use it on any production machines until they're a few more releases in.

The European Commission today fined Google 2.95 billion for abusing its dominant position in the advertising technology market, despite the threat of trade retribution from U.S President Donald Trump. The American tech giant is alleged to have distorted the market for online ads by favoring its own services to the detriment of competitors, advertisers and online publishers, the EU executive said in a press release. Jacob Parry at Politico Not only does Google have to pay a pretty hefty fine - for corporate standards, as it's still peanuts when looking at Google's revenue, because class justice is real - the company also has to submit a plan within 60 days detailing how it's going to end the illegal behaviour. Of course, Google is going to contest the fine, but the company is also running to daddy to cry and whine about how those damn Europeans won't let it engage in illegal behaviour. Last night, all the big US technology CEOs gathered for a dinner with Donald Trump, each taking turns gratuitously thanking and praising the big man for his amazing achievements during these first few months of his administration. Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and many more were all bending the knee and kissing the ring in what can only be described as a borderline pornographic display of fealty. Among them was, of course, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, one day after Google laughed its way out of the courtroom. Well you had a very good day yesterday," Trump said, calling on Pichai at the Thursday evening dinner. Google had a very good day yesterday. Do you want to talk about that big day you had yesterday?" I'm glad it's over," Pichai responded to Trump, causing an eruption of laughter from the other table guests. It's a long process," Pichai said. Appreciate that your administration had a constructive dialogue, and we were able to get it to some resolution." Jennifer Elias at CNBC Mind you, several of those other table guests" are also being investigated by a variety of arms of the US government for monopoly abuse and antritrust violations, and I'm sure their laughter was almost entirely self-serving. If Google of all monopolies can slime its way out of any serious consequences, what hope does that leave that the other tech giants will ever have to face the consequences of their abuse? At least the European Union seems to be mostly holding its head high so far, but one can't help but wonder how long the Phoenician princess can hold off the bull. The fact of the matter is that the European and US economies are heavily intertwined, and we let ourselves become utterly dependent on the US for our defense, too, and with Trump not deterred by Pyrrhic victories, a fallout is definitely not out of the question.

We're all being told that AI" is revolutionizing programming. Whether the marketing is coming from Cursor, Copilot, Claude, Google, or the countless other players in this area, it's all emphasizing the massive productivity and speed gains programmers who use AI" tools will achieve. The relentless marketing is clearly influencing both managers and programmers alike, with the former forcing AI" down their subordinates' throats, and the latter claiming to see absolutely bizarre productivity gains. The impact of the marketing is real - people are being fired, programmers are expected to be ridiculously more productive without commensurate pay raises, and anyone questioning this new corporate gospel will probably end up on the chopping block next. It's like the industry has become a nunnery, and all the nuns are meowing like cats. The reality seems to be, though, that none of these AI" programming tools are making anyone more productive. Up until recently, Mike Judge truly believed AI" was making him a much more productive programmer - until he ran the numbers of his own work, and realised that he was not one bit more productive at all, and his point is that if the marketing is true, and programmers are indeed becoming vastly more productive, where's the evidence? And yet, despite the most widespread adoption one could imagine,these tools don't work. My argument: If so many developers are so extraordinarily productive using these tools, where is the flood of shovelware?We should be seeing apps of all shapes and sizes, video games, new websites, mobile apps, software-as-a-service apps - we should be drowning in choice. We should be in the middle of an indie software revolution. We should be seeing 10,000 Tetris clones on Steam. Mike Judge He proceeded to collect tons of data about new software releases on the iOS App Store, the Play Store, Steam, GitHub, and so on, as well as the number of domain registrations, and the numbers paint a very different picture from the exuberant marketing. Every single metric is flat. There's no spike in new games, new applications, new repositories, new domain registrations. It's all proceeding as if AI" had had zero effect on productivity. This whole thing is bullshit. So if you're a developer feeling pressured to adopt these tools - by your manager, your peers, or the general industry hysteria - trust your gut. If these tools feel clunky, if they're slowing you down, if you're confused how other people can be so productive, you're not broken. The data backs up what you're experiencing. You're not falling behind by sticking with what you know works. If you're feeling brave, show your manager these charts and ask them what they think about it. If you take away anything from this it should be that (A) developers aren't shipping anything more than they were before (that's the only metric that matters), and (B) if someone - whether it's your CEO, your tech lead, or some Reddit dork - claims they're now a 10xer because of AI, that's almost assuredly untrue, demand they show receipts or shut the fuck up. Mike Judge Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence just isn't there. The corporate world has an endless list of productivity metrics - some more reliable than others - and I have the sneaking suspicion we're only fed marketing instead of facts because none of those metrics are showing any impact of AI" whatsoever, because if they did, we know the AI" pushers wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. Show me more than meowing nuns, and I'll believe the hype is real.

I recently removed all advertising from OSNews, and one of the reasons to do so is that online ads have become a serious avenue for malware and other security problems. Advertising on the web has become such a massive security risk that even the very birthplace of the world wide web, CERN, now strongly advises its staff to use adblockers. If you value your privacy and, also important, if you value the security of your computer, consider installing an ad blocker. While there is a plethora of them out there, the Computer Security Office's members use, e.g.uBlock origin (Firefox)orOrigin Lite (Chrome),AdblockPlus,GhosteryandPrivacy Badgerof the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. They all come in free (as in free beer") versions for all major browsers and also offer more sophisticated features if you are willing to pay. Once enabled, and depending on your desired level of protection, they can provide another thorough layer of protection to your device - and subsequently to CERN. CERN's Computer Security Office I think it's high time lawmakers take a long, hard look at the state of online advertising, and consider taking strong measures like banning online tracking and targeted advertising. Even the above-board online advertising industry is built atop dubious practices and borderline criminal behaviour, and things only get worse from there. Malicious actors even manage to infiltrate Google's own search engine with dangerous ads, and that's absolutely insane when you think about it. I've reached the point where I consider any website with advertising to be disrespectful and putting its visitors at risk, willingly and knowingly. Adblockers are not just a nice-to-have, but an absolute necessity for a pleasant and safe browsing experience, and that should be an indicator that we need to really stop and think what we're doing here.

As if Francesco P. Lovergine heard my prayers, he wrote an article detailing his experiences with using Guix. Considering he's a longtime Debian developer, we're looking at someone who knows a thing or two about Linux. In the last few months, I have installed and upgraded my second preferred GNU/Linux system, GNU Guix, on multiple boxes. Regarding that system, I have alreadywritten a few introductory postsin the recent past. This is an update about my experiences as a user and developer. I still think Guix is a giant step forward in packaging and management, in comparison with Debian and other distributions, for elegance and inner coherence. Francesco P. Lovergine Lovergine found some problems with Guix, most notably those stemming from a lack of manpower. It's not a hugely popular package management system and associated distribution, so the team of developers behind it is relatively small, and this leads to issues like outdated packages, problems arising from updates, and possible security issues. There's no specific security team, for instance, but at least it's easy to roll back updates due to the nature of Guix. Another problem, partially related to the lack of manpower, stems from the fact that the GNU Guix System uses some unusual systems, most notably GNU Shepard. This init system is an alternative to the widely-used systemd, alongside other alternatives like runit (which I use through Void Linux), but due to its relative lack of popularity, it can take some time for more complex packages to be made compatible with it. Especially some packages - like GNOME - that depend more and more on systemd are going to lag behind on Guix. For anyone with decent Linux experience and a willingness to tinker, I don't think any of these issues - and the others Lovergine mentions - are dealbreakers. Sure, you might not want to deploy the GNU Guix System on a production system or anything that requires solid, strong security, but for personal and enthusiast use it seems like an interesting and somewhat unorthodox Linux distribution.

This assembly language source code represents one of the most historically significant pieces of software from the early personal computer era. It is the complete source code forMicrosoft BASIC Version 1.1 for the 6502 microprocessor, originally developed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1976-1978. Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 GitHub page An amazing historical artifact to have, and I'm glad we now have the source code available for posterity. I hope Microsoft gets on with it, though, as I think it's high-time we get official open source releases of things like Windows 3.x, 95, earlier Office releases, and so on.

Microsoft has been working on allowing driver developers to write Windows drivers in Rust, and the company has published a progress report detailing this effort. In the windows-drivers-rsGitHub repository you'll find a bunch of Rust crates for writing Windows drivers in Rust. Using these crates, driver developers can create valid WDM, KMDF, and UMDF driver binaries that load and run on a Windows 11 machine. Drivers written in this manner still need to make use of unsafe blocks for interacting with the Windows operating system, but can take advantage of Rust's rich type system as well as its safety guarantees for business logic implemented in safe Rust. Though there is still significant work to be done on abstracting away these unsafe blocks (more on this below), these Rust drivers can load and run on Windows systems just like their C counterparts. Nate Deisinger at the Windows Driver Developer Blog As mentioned above, there's still work to be done with reducing the amount of unsafe Rust code in these drivers, and Microsoft is working on just that. The company is developing safe Rust bindings and abstractions, as well as additional safe structs and APIs beyond the Windows Driver Framework, but due to the complexity of Windows drivers, this will take a while. Microsoft states that it believes memory-safe languages like Rust are the future of secure software development, but of course, in true Microsoft fashion, the company doesn't want to alienate developers writing traditional drivers in C either.

In 9front, we host almost all parts of our development process on 9front - the git repositories, the mailing list, the ci/cd, the web site, and everything else. (The exception is #cat-v IRC) We use the system regularly, both when hacking on the system and in our personal use. Personally, I write most of my code on Plan 9, read my emails there, and often drive Linux from there. I run my home network off of a 9front CPU server, and host my websites off it. I know other people around 9front do similar. Ori Bernstein It clearly shows, too. If you dive into the 9front community, you'll quickly realise everything runs on 9front, and that does create a sense that the operating system is capable, and that its developers have confidence and pride in their work. Exploring 9front myself, it feels awesome to see that all the documentation I'm reading is being hosted on 9front machines. I'm going to relaunch the OSNews Gemini capsule, this time hosted on 9front, and since countless 9front users host their own Gemini capsules on 9front, I feel confident that I've got people to talk to when I need help. I just need the time to actually sit down and figure out the minutiae of 9front, because it truly is unique.

A little over a year ago, DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google is a monopolist and violated US antitrust law. Today, Mehta ruled that while Google violated the law, there won't be any punishment for the search giant. They don't have to divest Chrome or Android, they can keep paying third parties to preload their services and products, and they can keep paying Apple 20 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS. Mehta declined to grant some of the more ambitious proposals from the Justice Department to remedy Google's behavior and restore competition to the market. Besides letting Google keep Chrome, he'll also let the company continue to pay distribution partners for preloading or placement of its search or AI products. But he did order Google to share some valuable search information with rivals that could help jumpstart their ability to compete, and bar the search giant from making exclusive deals to distribute its search or AI assistant products in ways that might cut off distribution for rivals. Lauren Feiner at The Verge Mehta granted Google a massive win here, further underlining that as long as you're wealthy, a corporation, or better yet, both, you are free to break the law and engage in criminal behaviour. The only thing you'll get is some mild negative press and a gentle pat on the wrist, and you can be on your merry way to continue your illegal behaviour. None of it is surprising, except perhaps for the brazenness of the class justice on display here. The events during and course of this antitrust case mirrors those of the antitrust case involving Microsoft, over 25 years ago. Microsoft, too, had a long, documented, and proven history of illegal behaviour, but like Google today, also got away with a similar gentle pat on the wrist. It's likely that the antitrust cases currently running against Apple and Amazon will end in similar gentle pats on the wrist, further solidifying that you can break the law all you want, as long as you're rich. Thank god the real criminal scum is behind bars.

For an operating system that was once incredibly popular and expected to become a standard for a long time to come, it's remarkable how little experience most people have with CP/M. In fact, many conventions and historical limitations you might be aware of - like the 8.3 filename convention of DOS - come straight from CP/M, as it influenced DOS considerably. It's quite easy to emulate CP/M today, but it's just old and different enough that getting into it might be a but confusing, but that's where Eerie Linux's introduction to CP/M comes into play. This article is just what the headline promises: an introduction to the CP/M operating system. No previous knowledge of 1970s and early '80s operating systems is required. However, some familiarity with Linux or a BSD-style operating system is assumed, as the setup process suggested here involves using a package manager and command-line tools. But why explore CP/M in the 2020s? There are (at least) two good reasons: 1) historical education 2) gaining a better understanding of how computers actually work. Eerie Linux This article is a great way to get up and running with CP/M fairly quickly, and I intend to do just that when I find some time to mess around with it. What are some of the core, crucial applications that one should try on CP/M? Things people would be using back when CP/M was properly in use?

My goal with this article is to share my perspectives on the web, as well as introduce many aspects of modern HTML/CSS you may not be familiar with. I'm not trying to make you give up JavaScript, I'm just trying to show you everything that's possible, leaving it up to you to pick what works best for whatever you're working on. I think there's a lot most web developers don't know about CSS. And I think JS is often used where better alternatives exist. So, let me show you what's out there. Lyra Rebane As someone who famously can't program, the one thing I like about CSS is that I find it quite readable and generally easy to figure out how I can change things like colours, fonts, and so on. Of course, anything more complex will still break my brain, but even the more complex elements are still at least nominally readable, and it's often quite easy to determine what a piece of CSS does, even if I don't know how to manipulate it or how to get even close to any desired result. It's like how the fact I learned Latin and French in high school makes it possible for me to nominally understand a text in Spanish, even if I have never spent a single second studying it. JavaScript, on the other hand, is just a black box, incomprehensible gibberish I can't make heads or tails of, which in my mind goes against what the web is supposed to be about. The web is supposed to be an open platform in more ways than one, and the ability to make a website should not be hidden behind complex programming languages or website builder gatekeepers. The fact JavaScript is a resource hog and misused all over the place sure doesn't help, either. If you want to know more about the current state of CSS, the linked article by Lyra Rebane is a great place to start. I wish I had the skills to finally give OSNews a full makeover, but alas, I don't.

Jussi Pakkanen, creator of the Meson build system, has some words about modules in C++. If C++ modules can not show a 5* compilation time speedup (preferably 10*) on multiple existing open source code base, modules should be killed and taken out of the standard. Without this speedup pouring any more resources into modules is just feeding the sunk cost fallacy. That seems like a harsh thing to say for such a massive undertaking that promises to make things so much better. It is not something that you can just belt out and then mic drop yourself out. So let's examine the whole thing in unnecessarily deep detail. You might want to grab a cup of$beveragebefore continuing, this is going to take a while. Jussi Pakkanen I'm not a programmer so I'm leaving this for the smarter people among us to debate.

The months keep slipping through our fingers, during this, our slow but relentless march towards the inevitability of certain death, so it's time for another month of improvements to Redox, the general-purpose microkernel operating system written in Rust. This past month the work to bring various components of system76's COSMIC desktop environment to Redox continues, with COSMIC Reader making its way to Redox. Jeremy Soller, creator of the Redox project and one of its primary engineers, will be using COSMIC Reader running on Redox to hold a presentation about Redox at RustConf. Aside from that important port, this month - in the middle of Summer on in this hemisphere - seems to mostly consist of a ton of smaller bugfixes and improvements. Relibc, Redox' C standard library, has seen a ton of work, as usual, a few ports were fixed and updated, like vim and OpenSSH, Orbital now has fullscreen support, and so, so much more.

DistroWatch's Jesse Smith is bringing some attention to an issue I have never encountered and had never heard of, and it has to do with antivirus software on Windows. It seems it's not uncommon for antivirus software on Windows to mark Linux ISOs as malware or otherwise dangerous, and it seems people are reporting these findings to DistroWatch, for some reason. DistroWatch makes it clear they don't host any of the ISOs, and that close to all of these warnings from antivirus software are false positives. Sowhy do multiple Windows virus scanners report that they find malware in Linux downloads? Putting aside the obvious conspiracy theories about anti-virus vendors not wanting to lose customers, what is probably happening is the scanners are detecting an archive file (the ISO) which contains executable code, and flagging it as suspicious. Some of the code is even able to change the disk layout, which is something that looks nasty from a security point of view. It's entirely understandable that a malware scanner which sees an archive full of executable code that could change the way the system boots would flag it as dangerous. Jesse Smith at DistroWatch I wonder how many people curious about Linux downloaded an ISO, only to delete is after their Windows antivirus marked it as dangerous. I can't imagine the number to be particularly high - if you're downloading a Linux ISO, you're probably knowledgeable enough to figure out it's a false positive - but apparently it's a big enough issue that DistroWatch needs to inform its readers about it, which is absolutely wild to me.

Another small release for the IceWM window manager - one of the staples of the open source world. IceWM 3.9.0 seems focused mostly on cursor-related changes, as it adds libXcursor as an alternative to XPM cursors. This means IceWM is no longer dependent on libXpm, and gains the benefits that come with Xcursor. There's the usual few bugfixes and translation updates as well.

I stumbled upon an LWN.net article from 2023, in which Lars Wirzenius, a long-time Debian developer and friend of Linus Torvalds, recalls the very early days of Linux - in fact, before it was even called Linux. There's so many fun little stories in here, like how the Linux kernel started out as a multitasking demo written in x86 assembly, which did nothing more than write As and Bs on the screen, or the fact Linux was originally called Freax before Ari Lemmke, one of the administrators offtp.funet.fi, opted for the name Linux" when uploading the first release. However, my favourite story is about what installing Linux was like during those early days. During this time, people were interested in trying out this new thing, so Linus needed to provide an installation method and instructions. Since he only had one PC, he came to visit to install it on mine. Since his computer had been used to develop Linux, which had simply grown on top of his Minix installation, it had never actually been installed before. Thus, mine was the first PC where Linux was ever installed. While this was happening, I was taking a nap, and I recommend this method of installing Linux: napping, while Linus does the hard work. Lars Wirzenius at LWN.net The entire article is a joy to read, and since it's from 2023, I'm sure I'm late to the party and none of it is news to many of you. On a more topical note, Wirzenius published a short article today detailing why he still uses Debian, after all these decades.

I am a huge fan of myRock 5 ITX+. It wraps an ATX power connector, a 4-pin Molex, PoE support, 32 GB of eMMC, front-panel USB 2.0, and two Gen 3*2 M.2 slots around a Rockchip 3588 SoC that can slot into any Mini-ITX case. Thing is, I never put it in a case because the microSD slot lives on the side of the board, and pulling the case out and removing the side panel to install a new OS got old with a quickness. I originally wanted to rackmount the critter, but adding a deracking difficulty multiplier to the microSD slot minigame seemed a bit souls-like for my taste. So what am I going to do? Grab a microSD extender and hang that out the back? Nay! I'm going to neuralyze the SPI flash and install some Kelvin Timeline firmware that will allow me to boot and install generic ARM Linux images from USB. Interfacing Linux Using EDK2 to add UEFI to an ARM board is awesome, as it solves some of the most annoying problems of these ARM boards: they require custom images specifically prepared for the board in question. After flashing EDK2 to this board, you can just boot any ARM Linux distribution - or Windows, NetBSD, and so on - from USB and install it from there. There's still a ton of catches, but it's a clear improvement. The funniest detail for sure, at least for this very specific board, is that the SPI flash is exposed as a block device, so you can just use, say the GNOME Disk Utility to flash any new firmware into it. The board in question is a Radxa ROCK 5 ITX+, and they're not all that expensive, so I'm kind of tempted here. I'm not entirely sure what I'd need yet another computer for, honestly, but it's not like that's ever stopped any of us before.

If you're of a certain age (and not American), there's a specific corporate font you're most likely aware of. You may not know its exact name, and you may not actively remember it, but once you see it, you know exactly what you're looking at. The font's called Nokia Sans (and Nokia Serif), and it was used by pretty much every single Nokia device between roughly 2002 and 2013 or so, when it was replaced by a very bland font made by Bruno Maag (with help from the person who designed Comic Sans) that they used after that. I can't remember why, exactly, but I got majorly nostalgic for Nokia's characteristic, recognisable font, and decided to see if it would work as a user interface font. Now, the font is still owned by Nokia and I couldn't find a proper place to download it, but I eventually stumbled upon a site that had each individual variant listed for download. I downloaded each of them, installed them using KDE's font installation method, and tried it out as my user interface font. You'll quickly discover you shouldn't use the regular variant, but should instead opt for the Nokia Sans Wide variant. Back in 2011, when Nokia originally announced it was replacing Nokia Sans, the creator of the font, Erik Spiekermann, responded to the announcement on his blog. Apparently, one of the major reasons for Nokia to change fonts was that they claimed Nokia Sans wouldn't work as a user interface font, but Spiekermann obviously disagrees, pointing specifically to the Wide variant. In fact, Spiekermann does not pull any punches. After 10 years it was high time to look at Nokia's typefaces as the dominant visual voice of the brand but whoever decided on a completely new direction was either not aware of what was available or was persuaded by Bruno Maag to start over. Bruno may not create the most memorable typefaces, but he certainly knows how to sell them. And technically, their fonts are excellent. Too bad they didn't have the confidence to work with me on an update. Instead they're throwing out ten years of brand recognition in favour of blandness. Erik Spiekermann I was pleasently surprised by just how nice the font looks when used as a general user interface font. It's extremely legible at a variety of sizes, and has a ton of character without becoming gimmicky or overbearing. What originally started as mere curiosity has now become my UI font of choice on all my machines, finally displacing Inter after many years of uncontested service. Of course, all of this is deeply personal and 95% an issue of taste, but I wanted to write about it to see if I'm just entirely crazy, or if there's some method to my madness. Do note that I'm using high DPI displays, and KDE on Wayland, and that all of this may look different on Windows or macOS, or on displays with lower DPI. One of Inter's strengths is that it renders great on both high and lower DPI displays, but since I don't have any lower DPI displays anymore, I can't test it in such an environment. I'm also not entirely sure about the legal status of downloading fonts like this, but I am fairly sure you're at least allowed to use non-free fonts for personal, non-commercial use, but please don't quote me on that. Since downloading each variant of these Nokia fonts is annoying, I'd love to create and upload a zip file containing all of them, but I'm sure that's illegal. I'm not a font connoisseur, so I may be committing a huge faux pas here? Not that I care, but reading about font nerds losing their minds over things I never even noticed is always highly entertaining.

Blocky Planet is a tech demo I created in theUnity game enginethat attempts to map Minecraft's cubic voxels onto a spherical planet. The planet is procedurally generated and fully destructible, allowing players to place or remove more than 20 different block types. While much of the implementation relies on common techniques you'd expect from your average Kirkland brand Minecraft clone, the spherical structure introduces a number of unique design considerations. This post will focus on these more novel challenges. Bowerbyte What a great read. Turning a flat earth' game like Minecraft into something taking place on a spherical world seems impossible at first, but it seems Bowerbyte managed to do it. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to play a Minecraft-like game on an actual sphere, this is it.

Genode 25.08 is ripe with deeply technical topics that have been cooking since the beginning of the year or even longer. In particular our new kernel scheduler as the flagship feature of this release has been in the works since February 2024. SectionKernel scheduling for fairness and low latencytells its background story and explains the approach taken. Another culmination of a long-term endeavor is the introduction of an alternative to XML syntax, specifically designed for the usage patterns of Genode and Sculpt OS. SectionConsideration of a lean alternative to XMLkicks off the practical evaluation of an idea that gradually evolved over more than two years. Also the holistic storage optimizations presented in SectionBlock-storage stack renovationsare the result of careful long-term analysis, planning, and execution. Genode 25.08 release notes While these are the three tentpole features for this release, there's a whole lot more here, as well. Genode's Linux-based PC device drivers have all been updated to Linux 6.12, there are a ton of fixes related to USB, optional EFI boot support in VirtualBox 6, and tons more.

Open source, the thing that drives the world, the thing Harvard says has an economic value of 8.8 trillion dollars (also a big number). Most of it is one person. And I can promise you not one of those single person projects have the proper amount of resources they need. If you want to talk about possible risks to your supply chain, a single maintainer that's grossly underpaid and overworked. That's the risk. The country they are from is irrelevant. Josh Bressers If the massive corporations that exploit the open source world for massive personal profit don't want to contribute back, perhaps it's time we start making them. I envision an European Economic Area-wide open source contribution tax", levied against any technology corporation operating within the European Economic Area, whether they actually make use of open source code or not, not entirely unlike how insurance works - you pay into it even if you don't make any claims. Such tax could be based on revenue, number of users, or any combination thereof or other factors. The revenue from this open source contribution tax is put into an EEA-wide fund and redistributed to EEA-based open source maintainers in the form of a monetary subsidy. Such types of taxes and money redistribution frameworks already exist in virtually every country for a whole wide variety of purposes and in a wide variety of forms, both in non-commercial and commercial settings. While it may seem complicated at first, it really isn't. The most difficult aspect is definitely figuring out who, exactly, would be eligible to receive the subsidy and how much, but that, too, is a question both governments and commercial entities answer every single day. No, it will never be perfect, and some people will receive a subsidy who shouldn't, and some who should receive it will not, but if that's a valid reason not to implement a tax like this, no tax or insurance should be implemented. The benefits are legion. Of course, there is the primary benefit of alleviating the thousands of open source maintainers who form the backbone of pretty much out entire digital infrastructure, which in and of itself should be reason enough. On top of that, it would also strengthen the open source world - on which, I wish to reiterate, our entire digital infrastructure is built - against the kind of infiltration we saw with XZ Utils. And to put another top on top of that, it would cement Europe, or the EEA more specifically, as the hub for open source development, innovation, and leadership, and would surely attract countless open source maintainers to relocate to Europe. In other words, it would serve the grander European ambition to become less dependent on the criminal behaviour US tech giants and the erratic behaviour of the US government. We can either wait indefinitely for those who exploit the free labour of open source maintainers to contribute, or we make them.

A long, long time ago, Android treated browser tabs in a very unique way. Individual tabs were were seen as applications', and would appear interspersed with the recent applications list as if they were, indeed, applications. This used to be one of my favourite Android features, as it made websites feel very well integrated into the overall user experience, and gave them a sense of place within your workflows. Eventually, though, Google decided to remove this unique approach, as we can't have nice things and everything must be bland, boring, and the same, and now finding a website you have open requires going to your browser and finding the correct tab. More approachable to most people, I'd wager, but a reduction in usability, for me. I still mourn this loss. Similarly, we've seen a huge increase in the use of in-application browsers, a feature designed to trap users inside applications, instead of letting them freely explore the web the moment they click on a link inside an application. Application developers don't want you leaving their application, so almost all of them, by default, will now open a webview inside the application when you click on an outbound link. For advertising companies, like Google and Facebook, this has the additional benefit of circumventing any and all privacy protections you may have set up in your browser, since those won't apply to the webview the application opens. This sucks. I hate in-application browsers with a passion. Decades of internet use have taught me that clicking on a link means I'm opening a website in my browser. That's what I want, that's what I expect, and that's how it should be. In-application webviews entirely break this normal chain of events; not because it improves the user experience, but because it benefits the bottom line of others. It's also a massive security risk. Worst of all, this switch grants these apps the ability to spy and manipulate third-party websites. Popular apps like Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebookhave all been caught injecting JavaScriptvia their in-app browsers into third party websites. TikTok was runningcommands that were essentially a keylogger. While we have no proof that this data was used or exfiltrated from the device, the mere presence of JavaScript code collecting this data combined with no plausible explanation is extremely concerning. Open Web Advocacy Open Web Advocacy has submitted a detailed and expansive report to the European Commission detailing the various issues with these in-application browsers, and suggests a number of remedies to strengthen security, improve privacy, and preserve browser choice. I hope this gets picked up, because in-application browsers are just another way in which we're losing control over our devices.

You already need custom scripts and third-party applications that make custom Windows ISOs to make installing Windows somewhat bearable - unless you enjoy spending hours manually disabling all the anti-user settings in Windows - and now there's another setting to add to the massive, growing list of stuff you have to fix after setting up a new Windows installation. Microsoft has announced that Word will start saving every new file to OneDrive (or another provider if you've installed one) by default. We are modernizing the way files are created and stored in Word for Windows! Now you don't have to worry about saving your documents: Anything new you create will be saved automatically to OneDrive or your preferred cloud destination. Raul Munoz on the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog There's the usual spiel of how this is safer and supposedly more convenient, but I suspect the real reason Microsoft is doing this is listed right there at the end of the list of supposed benefits: this enables the use of Copilot's AI" features right from the beginning. In other words, by automatically saving your new Word documents to OneDrive by default, you're giving Microsoft access to whatever you write for AI" training purposes. The setting can be changed, but defaults matter and few people change them. It's also possible to set another provider than OneDrive as your online storage, but again - defaults matter. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if few people will even realise their Word documents will be stored not on their local PC, but on Microsoft's servers.

We usually at least recognize old computer hardware and software names. But Asianmoetry taught us a new one:Pick OS. This 1960s-era system was sort of a database and sort of an operating system for big iron used by the Army. The request was for an English-like query language, and TRW assigned two guys, Don Nelson and Dick Pick, to the job. The planned query language would allow for things like list the title, author, and abstract of every transportation system reference with the principal city Los Angeles'." This was GIM or generalized information management, and, in a forward-looking choice, it ran in a virtual machine. Al Williams at Hackaday The linked article is a short summary of a YouTube video by the YouTube channel Asianometry, which goes into a lot more detail about Pick OS, where it came from, what it can do, who the people involved were, and where Pick OS eventually ended up. I had never heard of this system before, and it's easy to see why - not only was it used almost exclusively in vertically integrated complete solutions, it was also whitelabeled, so it existed under countless different names. Regardless, it seems the people who actually had to use it were incredibly enthusiastic about it, and to this day you can read new comments from people fondly remembering how easy to use it was. It has always been proprietary, and still is to this day, apparently owned by a company called Rocket Software, who don't seem to actually be doing anything with it.

While Nix and NixOS get all the attention when it comes to declarative package management, there are other, competing implementations of the same general idea. Guix, developed as part of the GNU Project, was originally based on Nix, but grew into its own thing. The project recently announced a major change to how it packages Rust and its countless dependencies and optional crates'. We have changed to a simplified Rust packaging model that is easier to automate and allows for modification, replacement and deletion of dependencies at the same time. The new model will significantly reduce our Rust packaging time and will help us to improve both package availability and quality. Hilton Chain at the Guix blog I hear people talk about Nix and NixOS all the time - I tried it myself, too, but I felt I was using an IBM z17 mainframe to watch a YouTube video - and in fact, Nix has kind of become a meme in and of itself, but you never hear people talk about Guix. With this being OSNews, I'm assuming there's going to be people here using it, and I'm incredibly curious about your experiences. What are the features and benefits that make you use it? If you're curious - the best way to try Guix is probably to install the GNUGuix System, the Linux distribution built around Guix and Shepard, GNU's alternative init system. It's available for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64, and can be virtualised too, of course.

The following chart shows how the Adobe Reader installer has grown in size over the years. When possible, 64-bit versions of installers were used. Alexander Gromnitsky Disk space is cheap, sure, but this is insanity.

I recently moved to an area with more internet provider options, all of which werenotsatellite-based. This change allowed me leave my current provider (Starlink) and also freed my network from being locked behind CGNAT. The jump from ~150Mbps to 1Gbps has been fantastic, but the real benefit in this switch has been the ability to overhaul my home network setup. Bradley Taunt OpenBSD is generally the way to go for custom router setups, it seems, and if it wasn't for my own full Ubiquiti setup, I'd definitely consider this too.

Google's grip on Android keeps tightening. In what will certainly be another step that we will look back upon as just another nail in the coffin, Google is going to require every Android developer to register with Google, even if they don't publish anything in the Play Store. In other words, even if you develop Android applications ad only make them available through F-Droid or GitHub, you'll still have to register with Google and hand over a bunch of personal information and a small fee of $25. Google is effectively recreating Apple's Gatekeeper for macOS, but on Android. It won't come as a surprise to you that Google is doing this in the name of security and protecting users. The company claims that its own analysis found over 50 times more malwarefrom internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play", and the main reason is that malware developers can hide behind anonymity. As such, Google's solution is to simply deanonymise every single Android developer. Starting next year, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users oncertified Android devices. This creates crucial accountability, making it much harder for malicious actors to quickly distribute another harmful app after we take the first one down. Think of it like an ID check at the airport, which confirms a traveler's identity but is separate from the security screening of their bags; we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from. This change will start in a few select countries specifically impacted by these forms of fraudulent app scams, often from repeat perpetrators. Suzanne Freyat the Android Developer Blog This new policy will only apply to certified Android devices", which means Android devices that ship with Google Play Services and all related Google stuff preinstalled. How this policy will affect devices running de-Googled Android ROMs like GrapheneOS where the user has opted to install the Play Store and Google Play Services is unclear. Google does claim the personal information you hand over as part of your registration will remain entirely private and not be shown to anyone, but that's not going to reassure anyone. To its small credit, Google intends to create an Android Developer Console explicitly for developers who only operate outside of the Play Store, and a special workflow for students and hobbyists that waives the $25 fee. First tests will start in October of this year, with an official rollout in a number of countries later in 2026, which will then expand to cover the whole world. The first countries seeing the official rollout will be countries hit especially hard by scams (according to Google's research, at least): Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Google has been trying to claw back control over Android for years now, and it seems the pace is accelerating lately. None of these steps should surprise you, but they should highlight just how crucially important it is that we somehow managed to come to a viable third way, something not controlled by either Apple or Google.

Earlier this year, I was trying to get actual daily work done on HP-UX 11.11 (11i v1) running on HP's last and greatest PA-RISC workstation, the HP c8000. After weeks of frustration caused first by outdated software no longer working properly with the modern web, and then by modern software no longer compiling on HP-UX 11.11, I decided to play the ace up my sleeve: NetBSD's pkgsrc has support for HP-UX. Sadly, HP-UX is obviously not a main platform or even a point of interest for pkgsrc developers - as it should be, nobody uses this combination - so various incompatibilities and more modern requirements had snuck into pkgsrc, and I couldn't get it to bootstrap. I made some minor progress here and there with the help of people far smarter than I, but in the end I just lacked the skills to progress any further. This story will make it to OSNews in a more complete form, I promise. Anyway, in May of this year, it seems Brian Robert Callahan was working on a very similar problem: getting pkgsrc to work properly on IBM's AIX. The state of packages on AIX genuinely surprises me. IBM hosts arepositoryof open source software for AIX. But it seems pretty sparse compared to what youcouldget with pkgsrc. Anotherwebsiteoffering AIX packages seems quite old. I think pkgsrc would be a great way to bring modern packages to AIX. I am not the first to think this. There are AIX 7.2 pkgsrc packages available atthis repository, however all the packages are compiled as 32-bit RISC System/6000 objects. I would greatly prefer to have everything be 64-bit XCOFF objects, as we could do more with 64-bit programs. There also aren't too many packages in that repository, so I think starting fresh is in our best interest. As we shall see, this was not as straightforward as I would have hoped. Brian Robert Callahan Reading through his journey getting pkgsrc to work properly on AIX, I can't help but feel a bit better about myself not being to get it to work on HP-UX 11.11. Callahan was working with AIX 7.2 TL4, which was released in November 2019 and still actively supported by IBM on a maintained architecture, while I was working with HP-UX 11.11 (or 11i v1), which last got some updates in and around 2005, running on an architecture that's well dead and buried. Looking at what Callahan still had to figure out and do, it's not surprising someone with my lack of skill in this area couldn't get it working. I'm still hoping someone far smarter than I stumbles upon a HP c8000 and dives into getting pkgsrc to work on HP-UX, because I feel pkgsrc could turn an otherwise incredibly powerful HP c8000 from a strictly retro machine into something borderline usable in the modern world. HP-UX is much harder to virtualise - if it's even possible at all - so real hardware is probably going to be required. The NetBSD people on Mastodon suggested I could possibly give remote access to my machine so someone could dive into this, which is something I'll keep under consideration.

The history of Android applications on Windows is convoluted, with various failed and cancelled attempts by Microsoft to allow Windows users to run Android applications behind us. Now that these attempts are well dead and buried, Microsoft is going at it from a different perspective: what if you could continue where you left off on your Android phone, right on your Windows machine, but without having to run an Android applications on Windows? We are beginning to gradually roll out the ability to seamlessly resume using your favorite apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channels. To start with, you will be able to resume or continue listening to your favorite Spotify tracks and episodes right from where you left off on the Spotify app on your Android phone. First, start listening to one of your favorite songs or episodes in the Spotify app on your Android phone. On your PC (running the latest Insider Preview builds in the Dev or Beta Channels) a Resume alert'will appear onyour taskbar. When you click on that alert, Spotify's desktop app will open and the same track will now continue playing on your PC. Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc So basically, the Spotify application on Windows will know where you left off on the Spotify application on Android, and resume playback. This is table-stakes for most services, and it doesn't seem like it would warrant such a big announcement from Microsoft, and while I don't use Spotify, I assume it was already built into the service anyway. It seems all Microsoft is doing is providing a nice little notification to expose that functionality a little bit more clearly, but it also explains that you need to manually link your device and the Spotify Android application to the Windows PC and Spotify Windows application, which seems like a lot of manual steps. Does this mean every application developer needs to opt into this and add this feature, thereby making it dead on arrival? Well, yes, you'll need to add support on both sides of the equation, which I can guarantee you very few developers will do. Not only does this feature require you to already have a Windows version of your application - which, statistically, you don't - it also requires you to do the work yourself, and manually apply to Microsoft to even gain access to the required APIs and SDKs. The odds of this feature making it beyond a few very big names Microsoft can give money to is slim.

I have a slight problem wherein every time I start up a game of NetHack, I completely lose touch with my surroundings for hours on end. ThankfullyThe DevTeam Thinks Of Everythingand there's a solution that allows communication with the outside world without breaking immersion: the mail daemon! If compiled with-DMAILandOPTIONS=mailis set in your runtime configuration (the default on Linux), NetHack will periodically check a user specified mbox file (MAIL) for new mail, and upon receiving an email a mail daemon will spawn in and deliver a scroll of mail to the player. Upon reading this scroll a mail program (MAILREADER) will be executed, which hopefully allows you to read your mail. George Huebner I love everything about this.

The most unlikely subsystem of contention is definitely the init system used by Linux, with most popular distributions opting for systemd, while a vocal minority prefers to use something else. Neither of these two groups are wrong or right, as we live in a free world and different people have different needs and desires. Personally, I don't think there's a more utterly pointless and meaningless debate than this, and people who make the init system they use their entire personality more often than not come across as really, really sad. It's a tool; use the one you like and move on with life. A brand new init system was recently released by Leah Neukirchen, who among a ton of other things, contributes to Void Linux. It's called nitro, and it's a tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux", and it also can be used on FreeBSD supervised by FreeBSD's init. There's some overlap with runit here, so Neukirchen published a blog post detailing the differences between the two, which should help in getting a better understanding of what makes nitro stand apart. While both use a directory of services managed by small scripts, nitro seems to opt for a more contained, monolithic approach, as it keeps everything in a single process. On top of that, Nitro contains some new features runit doesn't have. The focus seems to be on integrating a few capabilities that on runit require hacks, but on nitro are just built-in, like support for one-shot services', i.e. running scripts on up/down without a process to supervise (e.g. persist audio volume, keep RNG state)", running service directories multiple times, and more. Nitro also maintains its runtime state in RAM and provides an IPC service to query it, meaning it can be run on read-only filesystems without special configuration. There's a lot more information in Neukirchen's blog post, including a look at some of the current limitations of Nitro. I highly suggest reading it, and perhaps we will see nitro as another valid alternative to the popular systemd.

It's not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta isshaking up and downsizingits artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that95 percentof companies' generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever.Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that this bubble may have swelled about as large as it can go. Surely, there will be no wider repercussions for normal people if and when Nvidia, currently propping up the market like a load-bearing matchstick, finally runs out of fake companies to sell chips to. But getting in under the wire, before we're all bartering gas in the desert and people who can read become the priestly caste, is Microsoft, with the single most Who asked for this?" application of AI I've seen yet: They're jamming it into Excel. Barry Petchesky at Defector I'm going to skip over the mounting and palpable uneasiness that the cracks in the AI" bubble are starting to form, and go right to that thing about Excel. Quite possible one of the most successful applications of all time, and the backbone of countless small, medium, and even large business, it started out as a Mac program to supplant Microsoft's MultiPlan, which was being clobbered in the market by Lotus 1-2-3. It wasn't until version 2.0 that it came to Intel, as an application that contained a Windows runtime. It was a port of Excel 2.0 for the Mac. Anyway, it took a few years, but Excel took over the market, and I don't think any other spreadsheet program has ever even remotely threatened its market dominance ever since. Well, not until Google Sheets arrived on the scene - it's hard to find any useful numbers, but it seems Google Sheets is insanely popular in all kinds of sectors, at least according to Statista. They claim Google's online office suite has a 49% market share, with Microsoft Office sitting at 29%. I have no idea how that translates into the usage shares of Google Sheets versus Microsoft Excel, but it's a sign of the times, regardless. One of the things you'd expect a spreadsheet to do is calculate numbers and tabulate data, and to do so accurately. The core competency of a computer is to compute, do stuff with numbers, and we'd flip out collective shit if our computers failed to do such basic arithmetic. So, what if I told you that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to add AI" to Excel, and as such, has to add a disclaimer that this means Excel may not do basic arithmetic correctly? Look, we can all disagree on the use of AI", where it makes sense, where it doesn't, if it even does anything useful, and so on, but I would assume - for the world's sake - that we can at least agree that using AI" in an application used to do very important calculations for a lot of business is a really, really dumb idea? Is the person doing the bookkeeping in Excel at Windmill Restaurant, in Spearville, Kansas, properly aware of the limitations of AI", or are they not following technology that closely, and as such only hear the marketing and hype? A spreadsheet should give accurate outcomes based on the input given by humans. The moment you let a confabulator loose on your spreadsheet, it ceases being a tool that can be used for anything even remotely serious. The fact that Microsoft is adding this nonsense to Excel and letting it loose on the unsuspecting public at large is absolutely wild to me, and I can assure you it's going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. Microsoft, of course, will be able to point at the disclaimer buried in some random support document and absolve itself of any and all responsibility. I'd like to point out that Lotus 1-2-3 probably still runs on Windows 11, for no reason at all.

If you have spent any time around HID devices under Linux (for example if you are an avid mouse, touchpad or keyboard user) then you may have noticed that your single physical device actually shows up as multiple device nodes (for free! and nothing happens for free these days!). If you haven't noticed this, runlibinput recordand you may be part of the lucky roughly 50% who get free extra event nodes. Peter Hutterer I've honestly always wondered about this, since some of my laptops shows both a trackpad and a mouse configuration panel even when there's no mouse plugged in. Thanks to this article, I now know why this happens.

There's a ton of cloud operating systems" out there, which basically are really fancy websites that try to look and feel like an operating system. There's obviously a ton of skill and artistry involved in making these, but I always ignore them because they're not really operating systems. And let's be honest here - how many people are interested in booting their PC, loading their operating system, logging in, starting their browser, and logging into a website to see a JavaScript desktop that's slower and more cumbersome than what they are already using to power their browser anyway? Still, that doesn't mean they can't have any interesting ideas or other aspects worth talking about. Take OS Yamato for instance; yes, it's one of those cloud operating systems, this time aimed at your mobile device, but it has something interesting that stood out to me. The system is partly ephemeral, and objects that haven't been altered or opened in a year will simply be deleted from the system. Each data object (note, photo, contact...) includes a lastOpenedAt timestamp. After 330 days, it shows a icon - a sign of digital wilting. After 365 days, it's automatically deleted. OS Yamato GitHub page The project definitely sounds more like an art installation than something anybody is supposed to seriously use in their day-to-day lives, and seems to ask the question: just how important are all those digital scraps you collect over the years, really? If you haven't bothered to open something in a year, is it really worth saving? For instance, from the moment I started my translation career in 2011 up until I quit in 2024, I saved every single translation I ever made, neatly organized in folders, properly backed up to multiple locations. I still have this archive, still make sure it's safe, but I never actually use it for anything, never open a single one of the files, I honestly don't even really care that much about it. So why am I still wasting so much energy in keeping it around? That seems to be the question OS Yamato poses, and there's something to be said for being less anal about which digital scraps we keep around, and why. It hasn't convinced me - yet - to delete my translation archive or perform any other pruning, but it did plant a seed.

Markdown - or, more accurately, incompatible variants of Markdown - is everywhere, but that doesn't mean everybody likes it. It's the lowest common denominator of light markup languages, with a lot of well-documented issues, and Karl Voit decided to write a long and detailed article about the Markdown's shortcomings. Just to make sure we're on the same page here: I do not want to take away awesome workflows that are made possible by using an LML like Markdown. I just want to mention that the very same kind of workflows are possible by using a better designed LML. Unfortunately, some issues mentioned here do seem very subtle and minor. However, their consequences are not. With LMLs getting more and more popular and gaining wider use in tools, we really should make sure that our LML choice is a really good one. Personal feelings aside. Karl Voit Voit clearly has a preference for a specific alternative LML, but that doesn't mean the points they make in the article are any less valid. The world of Markdown is chaotic, with a seemingly endless number of varieties and dialects, perfectly illustrated by the Markdown Monster. To make matters worse, the Markdown syntax is quite ambiguous, further complicating how you're supposed to write it, and how tools are supposed to process it. The end result is that documents you write in Markdown today might be difficult to process decades from now, which isn't exactly conducive to its intended function. Voit mentions more issues, but this is the main gist. There's one major issue - at least for me - that Voit doesn't go into, and that's a problem I have with any of these simple markup languages I've tried: their syntaxes rely on some of the most annoying and cumbersome characters to type. There's a lot of weird keyboard clawing you need to do to enter the characters required by the syntax, and it just makes for an uncomfortable typing experience for me. I wish someone would design one of these syntaxes with typability in mind, making sure to only use characters that are easy to type. While this probably imposes some pretty hefty restrictions during the design of such a syntax, I think it can make for a much more elegant typing experience. As a result, I do not use Markdown or any of its alternatives.

It is no secret that Windows 11's dark mode is undercooked, to put it mildly. While modern parts of the operating system support dark mode and they look fantastic with it, plenty of commonly used UI surfaces and legacy parts are still stubbornly light. Those include common file action dialogs, such as copying/moving progress, deleting prompts, file properties dialog, and more. Nearly four years into Windows 11's lifecycle, Microsoft is finally fixing that. Taras Buria at Neowin Many things about Windows baffle me deeply, but the half-baked, broken dark" mode must be one of the biggest of them all. Here's one of the largest, wealthiest companies in the world, and while introduced in 2016, the dark mode in their flagship operating system product is still effectively broken. Nine years into its existence, Windows users finally will no longer be blinded whenever they start a file operation, which is nice, I guess, but I doubt this new push to fix dark mode in Windows will cover everything. Windows' dark mode joins the Settings application as one of those things that's just deeply half-assed in Windows. I find it incredibly hard to believe Microsoft couldn't have taken like five developers from their AI" team to comb through Windows years ago to address these issues, so my only conclusion is that they just don't care. Windows and its user experience just isn't a priority for the company, and this should really make Windows users reconsider their choice" of operating system.

Googleis managing to achieve whatMicrosoftcouldn't: killing the openweb. The efforts oftech giantsto gain control of and enclose the commons for extractive purposes have been clear to anyone who has been following the history of theInternetfor at least the last decade, and the adopted strategies are varied in technique as they are in success, fromEmbrace, Extend, Extinguish(EEE) to monopolization and lock-in. What I want to talk about in this article is the war Google has been waging onXMLfor over a decade, why it matters that they've finally encroached themselves enough to get what they want, and what we can do to fight this. Oblomov (I can't discern the author's preferred name) Google's quest to destroy the open web - or at the very least, aggressively contain it - is not new, and we're all aware of it. Since Google makes most of its money from online advertising, what the company really wants is a sanitised, corporate web that is deeply centralised around as few big players as possible. The smaller the number of players that have an actual influence on web, the better - it's much easier for Google to find common ground with other megacorps like Apple or Microsoft than with smaller players, open source projects, and individuals who actually care about the openness of the web. One of Google's primary points of attack is XML and everything related to it, like RSS, XMLT, and so on. If you use RSS, you're not loading web pages and thus not seeing Google's ads. If you use XSLT to transform an RSS feed into a browsable website, you're again not seeing any ads. Effectively, anything that we can use to avoid online advertising is a direct threat to Google's bottom line, and thus you can be certain Google will try to remove, break, or otherwise cripple it in some way. The most recent example is yet another attempt by Google to kill XSLT. XSLT, or Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, is a language which allows you to transform any XML document - like an RSS feed - into other formats, like HTML, plaintext, and tons more. Google has been trying to kill XSLT for over a decade, but it's such an unpopular move that they had to back down the first time they proposed its removal. They're proposing it again, and the feedback has been just as negative. And we finally get to these days. Just asRSS feeds are making a comebackand users are starting to grow skeptic of the corporate silos, Googlemakes another run to kill XSLT, this time using the WHATWG as a sock puppet. Particularly of note,the corresponding Chromium issuewas createdbeforethe WHATWG Github issue. It is thus to no one's surprise that theoverwhelmingly negativereactions to the issue, the detailed explanations about whyXSLTis important, how instead of removing it browsers should move to more recent versions of the standard, and even the indications of existing better and more secure libraries to base such new implementations on,everycounterpoint to the removal have gonecompletelyignored. In the end, the WHATWG was forced to close down comments to the Github issue to stop the flood of negative feedback, so that the Googler could move on to the next step:commencing the process of formalizing the dismissal of XSLT. Oblomov (I can't discern the author's preferred name) At this point in time, there's really no more web standards as we idealise them in our head. It's effectively just Google, and perhaps Apple, deciding what is a web standard" and what isn't, their decisions guided not by what's best for a healthy and thriving open web, but by what's best for their respective bottom lines. The reason the web looks and feels like ass now is not because we wanted it to be so, but because Google and the other technology giants made it so. Everyone is just playing by their rules because otherwise, you won't show up in Google Search or your site won't work properly in mobile Safari. This very detailed article and the recent renewed interest in XSLT - thanks for letting everyone know, Google! - has me wondering if OSNews should use XSLT to create a pretty version of our RSS feed that will render nicely even in browsers without any RSS support. It doesn't seem too difficult, so I'll see if I can find someone to figure this out (I lack the skills, obviously). We've already removed our ads, and I think our RSS feed is full-article already anyway, so why not have a minimal version of OSNews you could browse to in your browser that's based on our RSS feed and XSLT?

If you're interested in developing for and programming on MS-DOS and other variants of the venerable operating system, SuperIlu has collected the various tools and applications they use and like for this very task. In case you're wondering who SuperIlu is - they are the developer of things like DOStodon, a Mastodon client for DOS, DOjS, and much more. This is my short list of interesting resources for MS-DOS development. This is neither meant to be unbiased nor exhaustive, it is just a list of software/tools I know and/or use. The focus is on free and open source software. SuperIlu at GitHub None of the items on the list are abandonware, so there's no risk of relying on things that are no longer being developed. With most of the items also being free and open source software, you can further be assured you're safe from the odd rugpull. If you're into DOS development, this is a treasure trove.

A week ago we talked about focus stealing prevention on KDE and Wayland, and this time we have a similar article, but detailing GNOME's approach instead. Many of the underlying mechanisms are the same, of course, but since GNOME uses a different window manager, the details are different. The problem GNOME faces is the same as KDE, though: application and toolkit developers need to adopt the XDG Activation protocol, but the question is how to get there. While some people have asked for focus stealing prevention to be disabled completely until it's implemented by most apps and toolkits, I'm not sure this is the best way forward. If we did that, nobody would notice which apps don't implement it, so there'd be no reason for toolkits to do so. On the other hand, there are some remaining issues around terminal applications and similar use cases that we don't have a plan for yet, so just switching tostrictto flush out app bugs isn't ideal either at the moment. Julian Sparber Basically, the GNOME team doesn't yet know how to move forward, and is collecting feedback and gathering information to see where to go from here. My suggestion would be to coordinate this effort with the KDE team, as the underlying systems and protocols are identical and the end goal is the same: get applications and toolkits to properly support XDG Activation. Many popular applications are shared between the two desktop environments anyway, so it makes sense to apply some mild pressure together, as one. Once support has permeated enough of the ecosystem to allow for focus stealing prevention to become stricter, GNOME and KDE would still be free to go off into their own directions. Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future!

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! One of the most hated features" of Windows is its update system - it's slow, error-prone, and most annoyingly of all, tends to interrupt users at the worst possible times. This last issue is apparently so common it's basically a recognisable meme, among both tech enthusiasts as well as regular users. The root cause of the problem is that because Microsoft wants to force users to install updates, you can only postpone them for a short while, after which Windows will install updates, even if you're about to start a presentation. Microsoft is now bringing this approach to the Microsoft Store. Up until now, the Microsoft Store allowed you to install updates whenever you pleased, but that's no longer the case. Just like Windows Update, you now only have the option to postpone application updates for a short while, after which they will be installed. There's no registry hack to turn this off or revert back to the old behaviour. Be advised in case you're using applications from the Microsoft Store for anything critical that starting soon, they will just update in the middle of whatever you're doing. Splendid.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! We all know the earlier versions of Windows NT were available not only for x86, but also for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC (and there were unreleased ports to SPARC and Clipper). While we have the operating systems archived and available, applications properly compiled for the non-x86 versions of Windows NT can be a bit harder to come by. For instance, while Microsoft Word for MIPS and Alpha have been available for a while, we apparently never had a copy of Microsoft Word for PowerPC archived. Until now. Antoni Sawicki was pointed to an eBay auction for a copy of Microsoft Office Standard 4.2, and the photographed box clearly said it contained version for x86, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC. He decided to buy it, and it did, indeed, contain the PowerPC version of Microsoft Word. Of course, he made this version of Office available online for posterity. An excellent find, and good to see we have people willing to spend money just to ensure software isn't lost to time.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! But what if your friends and relatives are more interested in FreeBSD than Linux? Well, here we have a detailed guide to setting up a FreeBSD desktop using KDE Plasma and Wayland. Yes, Wayland is available in the BSD world as well, and in a few years I wouldn't be surprised to see most FreeBSD desktop guides - including the documentation from FreeBSD itself - to primarily advise using Wayland over X11, as Wayland support in FreeBSD improve even further. I'm sure this will upset nobody.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! It's weekend, you might be visiting friends or relatives, and perhaps some of them are curious about switching away from Windows or macOS to Linux. There's countless guides out there about this very topic, but to help you along a bit and cut through the avalanche of AI" and SEO slop, here's a true beginners' guide to desktop Linux written by KDE developer Akseli Lahtinen, second most famous developer out of Finland after Linus Torvalds. There has been quite a surge in interest towards desktop Linux lately. The userbase, atleast according tosome metrics, seems to be climbing. I realised today that it's been 4 years for me since I did the switch. I have gathered some know-how that maybe a complete newbie could find useful. I also try to untangle some jargon I've learned: It may not be exactly technically correct, but this is meant for a more regular user anyway. Akseli Lahtinen This won't be particularly interesting for most people who read a site like OSNews, but it's a great roundup for newcomers in your circle.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! Ever wanted to know everything about a specific 8*19 font Intel used for the POST and BIOS screens on its motherboards? OS/2 Museum's Michal Necasek has you covered. The obvious remaining question is, who came up with 8*19 fonts for BIOS use? Was it really Intel? Or was it someone else? Note that the Intel boards were used bymanyOEMs (including but not limited to AST, Dell, Gateway, HP, Micron, Packard Bell) so just because an OEM system uses an 8*19 font doesn't mean there isn't Intel behind it. Michal Necasek Great weekend reading, as always, from Necasek.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! What if you could run the full macOS on your iPhone or iPad? Quite a few people have made the case to run macOS especially on the latter, and it seems this isn't as much of an unobtainable pipe dream as you might think. Duy Tran has been working on getting macOS to run on jailbroken iPhones and iPads, and it seems he's making some headway. Eventually, I managed to boot somewhat macOS 13.4 natively on my iPhone XS Max on iOS 16.5; keyboard & mouse input is currently done via VNC. After some manual patching, many apps and daemons running (WindowServer, ControlCenter, Dock, and even Xcode 15b8). Duy Tran on Reddit It should go without saying this is incredibly limited so far, and there's immense amounts of work required to bring this to a point where anyone could use this in any serious manner. Still, it's very impressive so far, and it shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that macOS can, indeed, run on iPads if Apple wanted it to. This initial code is on GitHub, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

Weremoved adsfrom OSNews. Donate toour fundraiserto ensure our future! An internal Meta Platforms document detailing policies on chatbot behavior has permittedthe company's artificial intelligencecreations to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual," generate false medical information and help users argue that Black people are dumber than white people." These and other findings emerge from a Reuters review of the Meta document, which discusses the standards that guide its generative AI assistant,Meta AI, and chatbots available on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, the company's social-media platforms. Jeff Horwitz at Reuters The only way one can describe the examples of allowed behaviour towards minors is absolutely fucked up. If I'd find any person talking to my kids like Facebook and Zuckerberg apparently think it's okay to talk to children, I'd be calling the police to file a report. I know I shouldn't be surprised considering it's Facebook and Zuckerberg, a company with a history of knowingly inciting violence and genocide and a founder who created his website to creep on women, but the lows to which this company and its founder are willing to go are just so unimaginable to even people with just a modicum of morality, I just can't wrap my brain around it. The treatment of people of colour isn't any better. Facebook will happily argue for you that black people are dumber than white people without so much as batting an eye. Again, none of this should be surprising considering it's Facebook, but add to it the fact that AI" is the endgame for totalitarians, and it all makes even more sense. These tools are explicitly designed to generate totalitarian propaganda, because they're trained on totalitarian propaganda, i.e., most of the internet. The examples of AI" being fascist and racist are legion, and considering the people creating them - Zuckerberg, Altman, Musk, and so on - all have clear fascist and totalitarian tendencies or simply are overtly fascist, we, again, shouldn't be surprised. Totalitarians hate artists and intellectuals, because artists and intellectuals are the ones who tend to not fall for their bullshit. That's why one of the first steps taken by any totalitarian regime is curtailing the arts and sciences, from Pol Pot to Mao, from Trump to Orban. Promoting AI" as a replacement for exactly these groups in society - AI" generating art" to replace artists, AI" doing research" to replace actual scientists - fits within the totalitarian playbook like a perfectly fitted glove. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. This apparently also applies to AI".