Haiku isn’t a BeOS successor anymore
So I got accepted into GSoC again! I’m going to be working on WebKit2. But what is WebKit2, or even WebKit, for that matter? Well, WebPositive uses WebKit to render its web pages. Currently, we use the WebKitLegacy API to communicate with WebKit. It would be nice to switch to the newer version: WebKit2. However, our port of WebKit2 still needs work. At present, it has lost its ability to even render any webpage at all! So, getting WebKit2 to work will be the … ⌘ Read more

COSMIC improves its application store, display mirroring, and more
As its first alpha release is closing in, we have another monthly update about COSMIC, System76’s new Linux desktop environment written in Rust. This month, they’ve further polished and shored up their application store, imaginatively named COSMIC App Store, and it’s supposedly incredibly fast – something I can’t say for its GNOME and KDE counterparts, which tend to be so slow I’ve always just default … ⌘ Read more

Opening windows in Linux with sockets, bare hands and 200 lines of C
X Server is slowly being deprecated in the Linux world and being replaced Wayland. Still X11 is an interesting protocol to look at from the perspective of binary communication and management of resource which require fast speeds. In this post I tried to cover basic information and create a simple but working app that is simple, defined in single file and easily compiles. No external code except l … ⌘ Read more

ChromeOS App Mall unifies app discovery for Chromebooks
We’ve been on the lookout for the arrival of the ChromeOS App Mall for a few months now. First discovered back in March, the new App Mall is arriving to do one, simple task: put the apps users want in one place to be found a Chromebook. While we have access to web apps, PWAs, Android apps and Linux apps on Chromebooks, it’s not always clear how to go about finding them. Should you install the web version or the Play Stor … ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi Connect: remote desktop for your Pi
Today we’re pleased to announce the beta release of Raspberry Pi Connect: a secure and easy-to-use way to access your Raspberry Pi remotely, from anywhere on the planet, using just a web browser. It’s often extremely useful to be able to access your Raspberry Pi’s desktop remotely. There are a number of technologies which can be used to do this, including VNC, and of course the X protocol itself. But they can be hard to configure, part … ⌘ Read more

US revokes Intel, Qualcomm’s export licenses to sell to China’s Huawei, sources say
The U.S. has revoked licenses that allowed companies including Intel and Qualcomm to ship chips used for laptops and handsets to sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies, three people familiar with the matter said. ↫ Alexandra Alper, Fanny Potkin, David Shepardson The timing of this news is very interesting, as despite the massive sanctions the Un … ⌘ Read more

NetBSD 8.3 released, marks the end of the 8.0 branch
NetBSD 10 and NetBSD 9.4 were only recently released, leaving one final branch to receive what will be its last update: NetBSD 8.3. NetBSD 8.0 was originally released in 2018, so this final release marks six years of updates, which is a good track record, especially now that two newer main releases are available to choose from. With 8.3 being the final release, this means no more regular or security updates, pkgsrc no longer su … ⌘ Read more

Just a bunch of scanners (JBOS?)
This is the story on how I spent far too much money and time getting a scanner to work over iSCSI so that I could prove “Chris O” wrong on StackExchange. The TL;DR is that yes scanners work fine over iSCSI. ↫ xssfox The next step is connecting a bunch of flatbed scanners to a disk array enclosure, but that turns out to be quite an expensive little exercise. Regardless, this is absolutely wild, and I love it when people go to great lengths just to prove that something p … ⌘ Read more

Jolie: the service-oriented programming language
Jolie crystallises the programming concepts of service-oriented computing as linguistic constructs. The basic building blocks of software are not objects or functions, but rather services that can be relocated and replicated as needed. A composition of services is a service. ↫ Jolie website Jolie is open source and available on GitHub. ⌘ Read more

LPCAMM2 memory is finally here
But today we got our hands on LPCAMM2 for the first time, and this looks like the future to us. LPCAMM2 is a totally modular, repairable, upgradeable memory standard for laptops, using the latest LPDDR chips for maximum speed and efficiency. So instead of overpaying (or under-speccing) based on guesswork about your future memory needs, you’ll hopefully be able to buy your next laptop and then install more RAM as needed. Imagine that! ↫ Carsten Frauenheim LPDDR memory, u … ⌘ Read more

GCC 14.1 released
GCC 14.1 has been released, and it should come as no surprise that the new features are not exactly something I, someone who doesn’t program, can properly parse. So, here’s the three items GCC itself thought were important to list first. The C frontend when targeting standards newer than C89 now considers many non-standard constructs as errors that were previously only warnings. See https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/porting_to.html#warnings-as-errors for more details. C23 _BitInt Bit-precise integer … ⌘ Read more

Stack Overflow signs deal with OpenAI, bans users trying to alter answers
We’re all aware of Stack Overflow – it’s a place where programmers and regular users can ask technical questions, and get answers from anyone who thinks they know the answer. Stack Overflow has become so ubiquitous among programmers and developers, the concept of “I just copied the code off Stack Overflow” has become a consistent meme to indicate you don’t fully grasp how something work … ⌘ Read more

Running NetBSD on OmniOS using bhyve
I want to run GoToSocial on some *BSD system. Because I am who I am, I went for using NetBSD 10.0 . And because my hypervisor is running bhyve on OmniOS , you get the title of this blog post. Don’t get too anxious, it is quite straightforward. So let the journey begin. ↫ Joel Carnat Bhyve is a hypervisor originating from FreeBSD, while OmniOS is a distribution of illumos, a continuation of the last open source Solaris release from Oracle. GoToSocial, meanwh … ⌘ Read more

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

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