The VGA attribute controller is weird
The grabber in Windows 3.1 was improved to save and restore the index register as well, but it does not attempt to restore the flip-flop state, which is significant. The problem with the VGA emulation was that it erroneously applied the flip-flop state to reads from port 3C0h, and Windows 3.1 would save the wrong index register value… but only the second time through, because the flip-flop state was different at that point. That is to say, the Windows 3.1 … ⌘ Read more

PowerPC 40x processor support to be dropped from the Linux kernel
In addition to Linux 6.10 expected to drop support for very old DEC Alpha processors (EV5 and earlier), it looks like the PowerPC 40x (early PowerPC 400 series) processor and platform support will be retired too. Back in 2020 was a proposal for dropping PowerPC 40x support from the Linux kernel given that the code was orphaned for a long time with no apparent users. The PowerPC 40x processors were fou … ⌘ Read more

First-generation Windows on ARM PCs will not be able to run Windows 11 24H2
Windows 11 supports a variety of ARM processors from Qualcomm. According to the official documentation, you need a computer with the Snapdragon 850 processor inside or newer to run the current operating system officially. However, customers with PCs powered by the Snapdragon 835, the original Windows on ARM chip from 2016, can bypass hardware requirements and install Windows 11 at … ⌘ Read more

Snikket: this week’s sponsor
Snikket is a FOSS project for creating private chat spaces for small groups, such as families, friends, or clubs. It doesn’t depend on a phone number, doesn’t upload address books anywhere, and doesn’t sell data to advertisers. It supports all the features you expect, including media and voice messages, audio and video calls, end-to-end encryption, group messaging, and more. Use it from multiple devices at once with the official apps, or even with unofficial, third-party apps … ⌘ Read more

With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone’s a WiiN-er (except Data General)
That’s right: it’s PowerPC, the most unloved of the architectures CE ever ran on — in fact, this is the first PowerPC Windows CE device I’ve ever found, and I’m the self-described biggest pro-PowerPC bigot in the world. Here’s an unusual form factor Windows CE device, running on the operating system’s least used CPU, from a storied computer company near t … ⌘ Read more

Palm OS gets a TOTP application
Still rocking your Palm OS device, but mutter under your breath every time you need to log into a website or service with two-factor authentication? Sick of carrying around an Android or iOS device just so you can log in on your Palm PDA? Worry no more, your prayers have been answered, you can finally throw that Android or iOS garbage into the sun. Get your 2-factor codes on your Palm, just like Google Authenticator. Unlike Hotpants (an old port of a J2ME phone app), … ⌘ Read more

Thanks to our outgoing sponsor: JMP
We’d like to thank this past week’s sponsor JMP for sponsoring OSNews. As a reminder, JMP is a fully FOSS service providing a way to get a real phone number that operates over the internet using XMPP. They provide numbers in the USA and Canada with everything you need to access SMS/MMS/etc. and voice calls using your XMPP (or SIP) clients of choice across all your devices. They are committed to growing the use of open communications technology such as XMPP, ult … ⌘ Read more

Why I run a BSD on a PC
But the biggest differential factor between BSDs and GNU/Linux is the way it is structured. In Linux, all components are designed to work together, but are completely separate. You’ve got the kernel, init systems, multimedia daemons, userland, bootloader, virtualization and containerization mechanisms, package managers, and so on. They are all separate projects with their own goals and are operated by separate entities. This is why we’ve got different Linux Distributions instead of O … ⌘ Read more

The Game of Trees version control system
Game of Trees (Got) is a version control system which prioritizes ease of use and simplicity over flexibility. Got is still under development; it is being developed on OpenBSD and its main target audience are OpenBSD developers. Got uses Git repositories to store versioned data. Git can be used for any functionality which has not yet been implemented in Got. It will always remain possible to work with both Got and Git on the same repository. ↫ Game o … ⌘ Read more

X.Org on NetBSD: the state of things
The big question – does all this have a future? The good news is that all new hardware has generic support in X. Someone writes either a modesetting kernel driver or a classical wsdisplay kernel driver and they will be automatically supported by the associated drivers in X. The bad news is that to have applications running we require access to a larger open source ecosystem, and that ecosystem has a lot of churn and is easily distracted by shiny new squirrels … ⌘ Read more

Dillo 3.1.0 released: first release since 2015
Do any of you remember the browser Dillo? The project’s been through a rough few years after the main developer of the layout engine sadly passed away, the lead developer disappeared from the project, the dillo.org domain was lost and taken over by spammers – but now there’s new people at the helm, and the browser just released it first new version since 2015. Dillo 3.1.0 brings a whole host of new features and improvements. Dillo is open … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft announces Zero Trust DNS private preview
To support Zero Trust deployments trying to lock down devices to only access approved network destinations, we are announcing the development of Zero Trust DNS (ZTDNS) in a future version of Windows. ZTDNS was designed to be interoperable by using network protocols from open standards to satisfy Zero Trust requirements such as those found in OMB M-22-09 and NIST SP 800-207. ZTDNS will be helpful to any administrator trying to use … ⌘ Read more

Nintendo issues DMCA takedown notice against over 8,500 Yuzu emulator repositories
The notice was filed on developer platform GitHub, which Nintendo claimed housed repositories that “offer and provide access to the Yuzu emulator or code based on ” which “illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Switch games.” GitHub said it contacted the owners of the repositories to provide an “opportunity to make … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD is building a graphical installer
FreeBSD is working on a graphical installer. Finally. The first hurdle to overcome when testing a new Operating System is to get it installed. What is more, the first impression new users gather from an Operating System is its installation process. The state of the art for Operating System installers nowadays definitely involves a graphical process. This is the case for mainstream systems but also for other UNIX systems comparable to FreeBSD: RedHa … ⌘ Read more

How to install the COSMIC desktop environment on Fedora 40
COSMIC Desktop Environment (DE) is a new project by System76, the company behind the popular Linux distribution Pop!_OS. In this tutorial, we will give you an overview about COSMIC DE and its features, and then we will walk you through the steps to install COSMIC Desktop Environment in the latest Fedora 40 Linux system. ↫ Senthilkumar Palani at OSTechNix A very easy way to try out the current pre-alpha state of CO … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft overhaul treats security as ‘top priority’ after a series of failures
Microsoft is making security its number one priority for every employee, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. After a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul,” it’s doing just that by outlining a set of security principles and goals that are tied … ⌘ Read more

RISC OS Open 5.30 arrives with Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi support
This is, in a way, a mature OS with an ecosystem and an aftermarket. (Which, we feel we must explicitly spell out, means that quite a few of those third-party applications and drivers will cost you money.) There are emulators that will let you run 20th century Acorn apps that you can find online, but this isn’t an emulated vintage environment like Amiga Forever. It’s not meant for running games from thirty years ago. … ⌘ Read more

The BASIC programming language turns 60
Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That’s when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the first program written in their newly developed BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language on the college’s General Electric GE-225 mainframe. Little did they know that their creation would go on to democratize computing a … ⌘ Read more

Inside the Snapdragon 855’s iGPU
Qualcomm’s Adreno 6xx architecture has been superseded Adreno 7xx, but it’s still used in countless devices, including the current-gen Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Here, I’ll be looking at the Adreno 640 GPU in the Snapdragon 855. Zarif98 on Reddit kindly provided a OnePlus 7 Pro, and I’ll be using that to check out Adreno 640. Compared to the older Snapdragon 821’s Adreno 530, Adreno 640 dramatically increases compute throughput while still working within a very constraine … ⌘ Read more

At Microsoft, years of security debt come crashing down
Years of accumulated security debt at Microsoft are seemingly crashing down upon the company in a manner that many critics warned about, but few ever believed would actually come to light.  Microsoft is an entrenched enterprise provider, owning nearly one-quarter of the global cloud infrastructure services market and, as of Q1 last year, nearly 20% of the worldwide SaaS application market, according to Synergy Research Gr … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Tencent-owned company Riot Games installs rootkit on every League of Legends players’ computer
With 14.9, Vanguard, Riot’s proprietary Anti-Cheat system will be deployed and active in League of Legends. This means that active enforcement of Vanguard will be in effect and working hard to make sure your queues are free from scripters, botters, and cheaters! We recently released a blog detailing the “why” behind bringing Vang … ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint: non-GNOME GTK desktop environments need to work together in the face of libadwaita
Anyone who has spent any time recently using non-GNOME GTK desktop environments, like Cinnamon, MATE, or Xfce, has had to deal with the unfortunate reality of a lot of GTK applications becoming GNOME applications instead, using GNOME’s own libadwaita. These applications are hard to theme, and do not integrate at all with the proper GTK applicati … ⌘ Read more

Redox gets USB HID support
Another month, another detailed report about the progress made in Redox, the Rust-based operating system. A major improvements this month is support for USB HID, allowing USB keyboards and mice to work on Redox, but the project does note USB hubs are still problematic and might not work properly. Thanks to these USB improvements, Redox’ desktop environment Orbital now also ran on ARM64 in Qemu for the first time, which is a great step towards running it on real ARM64 hardware. … ⌘ Read more

You can’t just assume UTF-8
Humans speak countless different languages. Not only are these languages incompatible, but runtime transpilation is a real pain. Sadly, every standardisation initiative has failed. At least there is someone to blame for this state-of-affairs: God. It was him, after-all, who cursed humanity to speak different languages, in an early dispute over a controversial property development. However, mankind can only blame itself for the fact that computers struggle to talk to each other … ⌘ Read more

A few facts about POSIX
Over 35 years ago, these problems with software portability led to the emergence of the first POSIX standard in 1988. The acronym was coined by Richard Stallman, who added “X” to the end of Portable Operating System Interface. It’s meant to provide a specification of the interface that different Unix operating systems should have in common, including programming languages and tools. It’s important to note that the interface is portable, and not the implementation. ↫ vorakl While POSI … ⌘ Read more

RISC-V support in Android just got a big setback
Although Google has shown significant progress in recent weeks in improving RISC-V support in Android, it seems that we’re still quite a bit away from seeing RISC-V hardware running certified builds of Android. Earlier today, a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google who, according to their LinkedIn, leads the Android Systems Team and works on Android’s Linux kernel fork, submitted a series of patches to AOSP that “remove ACK’s suppo … ⌘ Read more

JMP: this week’s sponsor
JMP is a fully FOSS service providing a way to get a real phone number that operates over the internet using XMPP. They provide numbers in the USA and Canada with everything you need to access SMS/MMS/etc. and voice calls using your XMPP (or SIP) clients of choice across all your devices. They are committed to growing the use of open communications technology such as XMPP, ultimately working to help people move their communication off the unencrypted telephone network and onto the fe … ⌘ Read more

9front “DO NOT INSTALL” released
There’s a new 9front release! So, what exactly is 9front, you may ask? Well, after it became clear that Bell Labs wasn’t doing much with plan9, a group of developers took matters into their own hands and created 9front, a fork of plan9. Their latest release is called DO NOT INSTALL, and brings things like more USB audio support, DNS over TLS, WiFi support for the Raspberry Pi, I2C support, and much more. I’m not particularly well-versed in the world of plan9, and more … ⌘ Read more

run0: a systemd-based, more secure replacement for sudo
Lennart Poettering, main developer of systemd, has announced run0, a systemd-based replacement for the well-known sudo command that fixes many of he inherent issues with the widely used tool to gain temporary elevated privileges. There are various problems with sudo, which basically come down to that it’s a large SUID binary, meaning it consists of privileged code that unprivileged users can run from their own context. This … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft At Work
Well, this was a wild goose chase of a read. J. B. Crawford dove into the history of something I’ve never heard of – Microsoft At Work – and came away with a story that’ while clearer thanks to his research, is still frustratingly nebulous. I’m still not entirely sure what Microsoft At Work really was, but I think it had the goal of running Windows on communications devices like faxes, to make it easier to share and work on documents across various devices. Crawford did a lot of digging, and eve … ⌘ Read more

The first video game, Spacewar!, on the DEC PDP-1 in your browser
This is a virtual DEC PDP-1 (emulated in HTML5/JavaScript) running the original code of “Spacewar!”, the earliest known digital video game. If available, use gamepads or joysticks for authentic gameplay — the game was originally played using custom “control boxes”. Spacewar! was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962 by Stephen … ⌘ Read more

Windows NT and NetWare on PA-RISC, and a HP-UX port to x86
Back when I was working on my article about PA-RISC, HP-UX, and UNIX workstations in general, I made extensive use of OpenPA, Paul Weissmann’s invaluable and incredibly detailed resource about HP’s workstation efforts, HP-UX, and tons of related projects and products. Weissmann’s been doing some serious digging, and has unearthed details about a number of essentially forgotten operating system efforts. First, it tur … ⌘ Read more

GNOME Foundation in financial trouble
As you may be aware, the GNOME Foundation has operated at a deficit (nonprofit speak for a loss – ie spending more than we’ve been raising each year) for over three years, essentially running the Foundation on reserves from some substantial donations received 4-5 years ago. The Foundation has a reserves policy which specifies a minimum amount of money we have to keep in our accounts. This is so that if there is a significant interruption to our usual incom … ⌘ Read more

A BSD person tries Alpine Linux
In February last year I wrote about running a FreeBSD desktop, and concluded that sometimes you need to give yourself permission to tinker. Well recently I’ve started tinkering with Alpine Linux! It’s been recommended to me for years, so I’m finally getting around to checking it out. There’s a lot to like if you come from BSD, which we’ll dig into here. ↫ Ruben Schade Just a quick look at this unexpectedly popular Linux distribution that really has its own identity. ⌘ Read more

Sculpt OS 24.04 released with initial suspend/resume support, new audio stack, and much more
The Genode project has released Sculpt OS 24.04, the general purpose desktop operating system based on the Genode OS Framework. This release is absolutely jam-packed with new features, improvements, and changes, and it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the biggest new features is support for suspend/resume, an experimental feature for now, for wh … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft intends to record everything you do on your PC for “AI” processing
Microsoft is about to go even more hog-wild with “AI” in Windows, as it intends to start recording everything you do on your Windows computer so “AI” features can find stuff for you. According to my sources, AI Explorer will run in the background and capture everything you do on your computer. It will document and triage everything it sees, no matter what apps or interfaces you’re … ⌘ Read more

How not to release historic source code
Regarding the release of the MS-DOS 4.00 source code, Michal Necasek makes an excellent point about how just dumping the code in git is a terrible and destructive way to release older source code. It’s terrific that the source code for DOS 4.00/4.01 was released! But don’t expect to build the source code mutilated by git without problems. Historic source code should be released simply as an archive of files, ZIP or tar or 7z or whatever, with all times … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft open-sources MS-DOS 4.00, releases early beta of MS-DOS 4.0 (multitasking)
Today, in partnership with IBM and in the spirit of open innovation, we’re releasing the source code to MS-DOS 4.00 under the MIT license. There’s a somewhat complex and fascinating history behind the 4.0 versions of DOS, as Microsoft partnered with IBM for portions of the code but also created a branch of DOS called Multitasking DOS that did not see a wide release. … ⌘ Read more

Corporate greed from Apple and Google have destroyed the passkey future
William Brown, developer of webauthn-rs, has written a scathing blog post detailing how corporate interests – namely, Apple and Google – have completely and utterly destroyed the concept of passkeys. The basic gist is that Apple and Google were more interested in control and locking in users than in providing a user-friendly passwordless future, and in doing so have made passkeys effective … ⌘ Read more

Gentoo bands use of “AI” tools
Gentoo, the venerable Linux distribution which in my headcanon I describe as ‘classy’, has banned any use of “AI”. A proposal by Gentoo Council member Michał Górny from February of this year banning it use has been unanimously accepted by the Gentoo Council. The new policy reads: It is expressly forbidden to contribute to Gentoo any content that has been created with the assistance of Natural Language Processing artificial intelligence tools. This motion can be revisited, … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS released
It wasn’t too long ago that new Ubuntu releases were major happenings in the Linux world, as it was the default Linux distribution for many, both old and newcomers, in the desktop Linux space. These days, Ubuntu release hit a little different, with Canonical’s focus having shifted much more to the enterprise, and several aspects of the distribution being decidedly unpopular, like the snap package management system. Still, Ubuntu is probably still one of the most popular, if not t … ⌘ Read more

The only viable Android and iOS competitor intends to leave China and go global
Huawei plans to expand its native HarmonyOS smartphone platform worldwide, despite coming under US-led sanctions that have deprived it of access to key technologies. The Chinese tech megacorp released its own phone platform in 2019, the same year that US sanctions blocked Huawei from having further access to Google’s Android software to power its devices. More recently, the … ⌘ Read more

Palm OS and the devices that ran it
But just as smartphones would do, PDAs offered a dizzying array of operating systems and applications, and a great many of them ran Palm OS. (I bought my first Palm, an m505, new in 2001, upgrading from an HP 95LX.) Naturally, there’s no way we could enumerate every single such device in this article. So in this Ars retrospective, we’ll look back at some notable examples of the technical evolution of the Palm operating system and the devices that ran it—and ho … ⌘ Read more

Google postpones phasing out third party cookies in Chrome once more
While Firefox and Safari phased out third party cookies years ago, it’s taking Chrome a bit longer because, well, daddy Google got ads to sell. As such, Google has been developing a complicated new alternative to third party cookies that it calls “Privacy sandbox”, a name in the vain of “Greenland”. This process has not exactly been going well, because Google has had to postpone phasing out thir … ⌘ Read more

Snapdragon X Plus will bring ARM to ‘even more’ Windows laptops
While it’s still yet to debut, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is looking like a big deal for ARM-powered Windows machines and, now, it’s getting a more affordable cousin in the Snapdragon X Plus. Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite’s 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite’s 3.8GHz to 3.4GH … ⌘ Read more

US Senate passes TikTok ban bill
A bill that would force China-based company ByteDance to sell TikTok — or else face a US ban of the platform — is all but certain to become law after the Senate passed a foreign aid package including the measure. It now heads to President Joe Biden, who already committed to signing the TikTok legislation should it make it through both chambers of Congress. The House passed the foreign aid package that includes the TikTok bill on Saturday. ↫ Lauren Feiner at The Verg … ⌘ Read more

How I tricked iOS into giving me EU DMA features
In iOS 17.4, Apple introduced a new system called eligibilityd. This works with countryd (which you might have heard about when it first appeared in iOS 16.2) and the Apple ID system to decide where you physically are. The idea is that multiple sources need to agree on where you are, before giving you access to features such as those mandated by the Digital Markets Act. ↫ Adam Demasi The way Adam Demasi managed to convince Apple his v … ⌘ Read more

OpenBSD as a daily driver
I always like it when I can link to an article written by an OSNews, and this time it’s even relevant to me as I’m exploring OpenBSD myself. OSNews reader and silver Patreon supporter Morgan has written an article about using OpenBSD as a daily driver. OpenBSD is forever tied in first place with Void Linux as my favorite desktop OS. This is particularly funny because OpenBSD isn’t “just a desktop OS”; in its purest form, the base installation without any installed packages, it ma … ⌘ Read more

Logitech adds ChatGPT to its computer mice
Did you know there’s one surefire way to know when a technology has truly jumped the shark? When they start adding it to computer mice. In today’s fast-paced, technology-enabled world, everyone is learning to work differently with breakthroughs in Generative AI. Mastering prompt building enhances your efficiency and creativity. That’s why we developed the Logi AI Prompt Builder, a time and click-saving solution. Rephrase, summarize, and create cu … ⌘ Read more

The man who killed Google Search
These emails — which I encourage you to look up — tell a dramatic story about how Google’s finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money. This is what I mean when I talk about the Rot Economy — the illogical, product-destroying mindset that turns the products you love into torturous, frustrating quasi-tools that require you to fight the company’s intentions t … ⌘ Read more