OSNews

ArcaOS 5.1.2 released

While IBM's OS/2 technically did die, its development was picked up again much later, first through eComStation, and later, after money issues at its parent company Mensys, through ArcaOS. eComStation development stalled because of the money issues and has been dead for years; ArcaOS picked up where it left off and has been making steady progress since its first release in 2017. Regardless, the d

https://www.osnews.com/story/144553/arcaos-5-1-2-released/

#OS2

Haiku inches closer to next beta release

And when a Redox monthly progress report is here, Haiku's monthly report is never far behind (or vice versa, depending on the month). Haiku's February was definitely a busy month, but there's no major tentpole changes or new features, highlighting just how close Haiku is to a new regular beta release. The OpenBSD drivers have been synchronised wit upstream

https://www.osnews.com/story/144556/haiku-inches-closer-to-next-beta-release/

#Haiku

The great license-washing has begun

In the world of open source, relicensing is notoriously difficult. It usually requires the unanimous consent of every person who has ever contributed a line of code, a feat nearly impossible for legacy projects. chardet, a Python character encoding detector used by requests and many others, has sat in that tension for years: as a port of Mozilla’s C++ code it was bou

https://www.osnews.com/story/144547/the-great-license-washing-has-begun/

#Legal

Microsoft really doesn’t want you to use the name “Microslop”

Microsoft is pushing "AI" hard in Windows, Office, and in their other products, and it's earned them a cute new nickname: Microslop. It turns out the company really doesn't like it when you use this nickname, however, and its official Copilot Discord server - yes, there is an official one - has gone into a co

https://www.osnews.com/story/144518/microsoft-really-doesnt-want-you-to-use-the-name-microslop/

#Microsoft

The Windows 95 user interface: a case study in usability engineering

If this isn't catnip to the average OSNews reader, I don't know what is.

Windows 95 is a comprehensive upgrade to the Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 products. Many changes have been made in almost every area of Windows, with the user interface being no exception. This paper discusses

https://www.osnews.com/story/144509/the-windows-95-user-interface-a-case-study-in-usability-engineering/

#Windows

GTK-NoCSD: an LD_PRELOAD library to disable CSDs

While Libadwaita applications running in a GNOME desktop environment look great and nicely consistent, they look utterly out of place and jarring when run in Xfce, Pantheon, KDE, and others. The biggest reason for this is GNOME's insistence on using client-side decorations, which feel at home inside a GNOME environment, but out of place in envi

https://www.osnews.com/story/144473/gtk-nocsd-an-ld_preload-library-to-disable-csds/

#GTK

Microsoft announces ESU program for Windows Server 2016, 10 Enterprise LTSB, and 10 IoT Enterprise 2016 LTSB

The regular, consumer version of Windows 10 isn't the only Windows release reaching or having reached end-of-life, now middling on under the Extended Security Updates program for the many people sticking with the venerable

https://www.osnews.com/story/144467/microsoft-announces-esu-program-for-windows-server-2016-10-enterprise-ltsb-and-10-iot-enterprise-2016-ltsb/

#Windows

Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU90 released

Despite continuous rumors to the contrary, Oracle is still actively developing Solaris, and it's been more active than ever lately. Yesterday, the company pushed out another release for customers with the proper support contracts: Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU90. Aside from the various package updates to bring them up to speed with the latest releases, this new Solaris ver

https://www.osnews.com/story/144465/oracle-solaris-11-4-sru90-released/

#Solaris

Blue-light filters are pure quackery

I was trading New Year’s resolutions with a circle of friends a few weeks ago, and someone mentioned a big one: sleeping better. I’m a visual neuroscientist by training, so whenever the topic pops up it inevitably leads to talking about the dreaded blue light from monitors, blue light filters, and whether they do anything. My short answer is no, blue light filt

https://www.osnews.com/story/144463/blue-light-filters-are-pure-quackery/

#InTheNews

Windows 11 26H1 will be Snapdragon-specific

As if keeping track of whatever counts as a release schedule for Windows wasn't complicated enough - don't lie, you don't know when that feature they announced is actually being released either - Microsoft is making everything even more complicated. Soon, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 11 26H1, but you most likely won't be getting it because it

https://www.osnews.com/story/144461/windows-11-26h1-will-be-snapdragon-specific/

#Windows

Undo in Vi and its successors

So vi only has one level of undo, which is simply no longer fit for the times we live in now, and also wholly unnecessary given even the least powerful devices that might need to run vi probably have more than enough resources to give at least a few more levels of undo. What I didn't know, however, is that vi's limited undo behaviour is actually part of POSIX, and for full compli

https://www.osnews.com/story/144459/undo-in-vi-and-its-successors/

#Unix

F9: an L4-style microkernel for ARM Cortex-M

F9 is an L4-inspired microkernel designed for ARM Cortex-M, targeting real-time embedded systems with hard determinism requirements. It implements the fundamental microkernel principles—address spaces, threads, and IPC, while adding advanced features from industrial RTOSes.
↫ F9 kernel GitHub page

For once, not written in Rust, and comes with bot

https://www.osnews.com/story/144430/f9-an-l4-style-microkernel-for-arm-cortex-m/

#OSNews

Windows 11’s new MIDI framework delivers MIDI 2.0

It's been well over a year since Microsoft unveiled it was working on bringing MIDI 2.0 to Windows, and now it's actually here available for everyone.

We’ve been working on MIDI over the past several years, completely rewriting decades of MIDI 1.0 code on Windows to both support MIDI 2.0 and make MIDI 1.0 amazing. This new combined

https://www.osnews.com/story/144428/windows-11s-new-midi-framework-delivers-midi-2-0/

#Windows

KDE Plasma 6.6 released

KDE Plasma 6.6 has been released, and brings with a whole slew of new features. You can save any combination of themes as a global theme, and there's a new feature allowing you to increase or decrease the contrast of frames and outlines. If your device has a camera, you can now scan Wi-F settings from QR codes, which is quite nice if you spend a lot of time on the road.

There's a new colou

https://www.osnews.com/story/144424/kde-plasma-6-6-released/

#KDE

SvarDOS: an open-source DOS distribution

SvarDOS is an open-source project that is meant to integrate the best out of the currently available DOS tools, drivers and games. DOS development has been abandoned by commercial players a long time ago, mostly during early nineties. Nowadays it survives solely through the efforts of hobbyists and retro-enthusiasts, but this is a highly sparse and

https://www.osnews.com/story/144420/svardos-an-open-source-dos-distribution/

#RetroComputing

Proper Linux on your wrist: AsteroidOS 2.0 released

It's been a while since we've talked about AsteroidOS, the Linux distribution designed specifically to run on smartwatches, providing a smartwatch interface and applications built with Qt and QML. The project has just released version 2.0, and it comes with a ton of improvements.

AsteroidOS 2.0 has arrived, bringing major features

https://www.osnews.com/story/144418/proper-linux-on-your-wrist-asteroidos-2-0-released/

#Mobile

A deep dive into Apple’s .car file format

Every modern iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS application uses Asset Catalogs to manage images, colors, icons, and other resources. When you build an app with Xcode, your .xcassets folders are compiled into binary .car files that ship with your application. Despite being a fundamental part of every Apple app, there is little to none official documentation ab

https://www.osnews.com/story/144416/a-deep-dive-into-apples-car-file-format/

#Apple

dBASE on the Kaypro II

Within the major operating system of its day, on popular hardware of its day, ran the utterly dominant relational database software of its day. PC Magazine, February 1984, said, "Independent industry watchers estimate that dBASE II enjoys 70 percent of the market for microcomputer database managers." Similar to past subjects HyperCard and Scala Multimedia, Wayne Ratcliff's dBASE II w

https://www.osnews.com/story/144414/dbase-on-the-kaypro-ii/

#RetroComputing

Why do I not use “AI” at OSNews?

In my fundraiser pitch published last Monday, one of the things I highlighted as a reason to contribute to OSNews and ensure its continued operation stated that "we do not use any 'AI'; not during research, not during writing, not for images, nothing." In the comments to that article, someone asked:

Why do I care if you use AI?
↫ A comment posted on OSNews

A few d

https://www.osnews.com/story/144405/why-do-i-not-use-ai-at-osnews/

#OSNews

Microsoft’s original Windows NT OS/2 design documents

Have you ever wanted to read the original design documents underlying the Windows NT operating system?

This binder contains the original design specifications for “NT OS/2,” an operating system designed by Microsoft that developed into Windows NT. In the late 1980s, Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, Windows, gained popula

https://www.osnews.com/story/144403/microsofts-original-windows-nt-os-2-design-documents/

#Windows

Exploring Linux on a LoongArch mini PC

There's the two behemoth architectures, x86 and ARM, and we probably all own one or more devices using each. Then there's the eternally up-and-coming RISC-V, which, so far, seems to be having a lot of trouble outgrowing its experimental, developmental stage. There's a fourth, though, which is but a footnote in the west, but might be more popular in its count

https://www.osnews.com/story/144401/exploring-linux-on-a-loongarch-mini-pc/

#Hardware

A brief history of barbed wire fence telephone networks

If you look at the table of contents for my book, Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, you’ll see that entries on networks before/outside the internet are arranged first by underlying infrastructure and then chronologically. You’ll also notice that within the section on wired networks, there are two sub-sections

https://www.osnews.com/story/144399/a-brief-history-of-barbed-wire-fence-telephone-networks/

#Internet

Haiku further improves its touchpad support

January was a busy month for Haiku, with their monthly report listing a metric ton of smaller fixes, changes, and improvements. Perusing the list, a few things stand out to me, most notably continued work on improving Haiku's touchpad support.

The remainder of samuelrp84’s patchset implementing new touchpad functionality was merged, including two-

https://www.osnews.com/story/144397/haiku-further-improves-its-touchpad-support/

#Haiku

Microsoft Store gets another CLI tool

We often lament Microsoft's terrible stewardship of its Windows operating system, but that doesn't mean that they never do anything right. In a blog post detailing changes and improvements coming to the Microsoft Store, the company announced something Windows users might actually like?

A new command-line interface for the Microsoft Store brings app discover

https://www.osnews.com/story/144394/microsoft-store-gets-another-cli-tool/

#Windows

The future for Tyr

The team behind Tyr started 2025 with little to show in our quest to produce a Rust GPU driver for Arm Mali hardware, and by the end of the year, we were able to play SuperTuxKart (a 3D open-source racing game) at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC). Our prototype was a joint effort between Arm, Collabora, and Google; it ran well for the duration of the event, and the performance was more than adequa

https://www.osnews.com/story/144392/the-future-for-tyr/

#Linux

The original Secure Boot certificates are about to expire, but you probably won’t notice

With the original release of Windows 8, Microsoft also enforced Secure Boot. It's been 15 years since that release, and that means the original 2011 Secure Boot certificates are about to expire. If these certificates are not replaced with new ones, Secu

https://www.osnews.com/story/144387/the-original-secure-boot-certificates-are-about-to-expire-but-you-probably-wont-notice/

#PrivacySecurity

Microsoft adds and fixes remote code execution vulnerability in Notepad

What happens when you slopcode a bunch of bloat to your basic text editor? Well, you add a remote code execution vulnerability to notepad.exe.

Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command ('command injection') in Windows Notepad App allows an unauthorized attacker to execut

https://www.osnews.com/story/144385/microsoft-adds-and-fixes-remote-code-execution-vulnerability-in-notepad/

#Windows

Kapsule adds easy developer environment containers to KDE Linux

If you're a developer and use KDE, you're going to be interested in a new feature KDE is working on for KDE Linux.

In my last post, I laid out the vision for Kapsule—a container-based extensibility layer for KDE Linux built on top of Incus. The pitch was simple: give users real, persistent development environm

https://www.osnews.com/story/144383/kapsule-adds-easy-developer-environment-containers-to-kde-linux/

#KDE

Redox gets working rustc and Cargo

Another month, another Redox progress report. January turned out to be a big month for the Rust-based general purpose operating system, as they've cargo and rustc working on Redox.

Cargo and rustc are now working on Redox! Thanks to Anhad Singh and his southern-hemisphere Redox Summer of Code project, we are now able to compile your favorite Rust CLI and TUI prog

https://www.osnews.com/story/144379/redox-gets-working-rustc-and-cargo/

#RedoxOS

80386 barrel shifter

I’m currently building an 80386-compatible core in SystemVerilog, driven by the original Intel microcode extracted from real 386 silicon. Real mode is now operational in simulation, with more than 10,000 single-instruction test cases passing successfully, and work on protected-mode features is in progress. In the course of this work, corners of the 386 microcode and silicon have been examined in

https://www.osnews.com/story/144377/80386-barrel-shifter/

#Intel

“The original vi is a product of its time (and its time has passed)”

For me, vim is a combination of genuine improvements in vi's core editing behavior (cf), frustrating (to me) bits of trying too hard to be smart (which I mostly disable when I run across them), and an extension mechanism I ignore but people use to make vim into a superintelligent editor with things like

https://www.osnews.com/story/144375/the-original-vi-is-a-product-of-its-time-and-its-time-has-passed/

#Unix

The official unplanned emergency OSNews fundraiser!

It's time for an OSNews fundrasier! This time, it's unplanned due to a financial emergency after our car unexpectedly had to be scrapped (you can find more details below). If you want to support one of the few independent technology news websites left, this is your chance. OSNews is entirely supported by you, our readers, so go to our

https://www.osnews.com/story/144352/the-official-unplanned-emergency-osnews-fundraiser/

#OSNews

The Dillo appreciation post

About a year ago I mentioned that I had rediscovered the Dillo Web Browser. Unlike some of my other hobbies, endeavours, and interests, my appreciation for Dillo has not wavered.

I only have a moment to gush today, so I’ll cut right to it. Dillo has been plugging along nicely (see the Git forge.) and adding little features. Features that even I, a guy with a blog, can put to u

https://www.osnews.com/story/144369/the-dillo-appreciation-post/

#Internet

KDE Linux improves by leaps and bounds

KDE's Nate Graham has published a status update about KDE Linux, the KDE project's new immutable Linux distribution, intended to be the "KDE OS" showcasing the best of the KDE community. While the project is approaching the beta stage, it's currently still in alpha, but from what I gather from friends who are using it, the alpha label might actually be like how H

https://www.osnews.com/story/144366/kde-linux-improves-by-leaps-and-bounds/

#KDE

The Scriptovision Super Micro Script video titler is almost a home computer

Cameron Kaiser comes in with another amazing article, this time diving into a unique video titler from Canada, released in 1985.

The Super Micro Script was one of several such machines this company made over its lifetime, a stylish self-contained box capable of emitting a 32x16 sma

https://www.osnews.com/story/144364/the-scriptovision-super-micro-script-video-titler-is-almost-a-home-computer/

#Hardware

Why E cores make Apple silicon fast

If you use an Apple silicon Mac I’m sure you have been impressed by its performance. Whether you’re working with images, audio, video or building software, we’ve enjoyed a new turn of speed since the M1 on day 1. While most attribute this to their Performance cores, as it goes with the name, much is in truth the result of the unsung Efficiency cores, and how they ke

https://www.osnews.com/story/144361/why-e-cores-make-apple-silicon-fast/

#Apple

Adventures in Guix packaging

We talked about Nemin's first impressions of the Guix System as someone coming from a Nix environment, but today they've got a follow-up article diving into the experience of creating new packages for Guix.

I spent about a week packaging WezTerm and learning the ropes of being a Guix contributor along the way.

During the packaging process I stumble many times, only to stand

https://www.osnews.com/story/144359/adventures-in-guix-packaging/

#Linux

The chaos in the US is affecting open source software and its developers

It was only a matter of time before the illegal, erratic, inhumane, and cruel behaviours and policies of the second Trump regime were going to affect the open source world in a possibly very visible way. Christian Hergert, longtime GNOME and Linux contributor, employed by Red Hat, wanted t

https://www.osnews.com/story/144348/the-chaos-in-the-us-is-affecting-open-source-software-and-its-developers/

#OpenSource

Commission trials European open source communications software: Matrix

“As part of our efforts to use more sovereign digital solutions, the European Commission is preparing an internal communication solution based on the Matrix protocol,” the spokesperson told Euractiv.

Matrix is an open source, community-developed messaging protocol shepherded by a non-profit

https://www.osnews.com/story/144346/commission-trials-european-open-source-communications-software-matrix/

#OpenSource

Microsoft has killed widgets six times

Gadgets, desk accessories, widgets - whatever you they were called, they were a must-have feature for various operating systems for a while. Windows in particular has tried making them happen six times, and every time, they failed to really catch on and ended up being killed, only for the company to try again a few years later.

Microsoft has been trying t

https://www.osnews.com/story/144338/microsoft-has-killed-widgets-six-times/

#Windows

QNX releases new desktop-focused image: QNX 8.0 with Xfce on Wayland

Christmas is already behind us, but since this is an announcement from 11 December - that I missed - I'm calling this a very interesting and surprising Christmas present.

The team and I are beyond excited to share what we've been cooking up over the last little while: a full desktop environment runnin

https://www.osnews.com/story/144075/qnx-releases-new-desktop-focused-image-qnx-8-0-with-xfce-on-wayland/

#QNX