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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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