Enlightenment 0.28.0 released

Enlightenment, the long-running desktop environment and associated libraries and frameworks, just released version 0.28.0. It brings initial support for NetBSD, support for Network Manager and a whole slew of related changes and fixes to make that possible, as well as native PipeWire support. There's also a brand new clipboard manager, which brings with it modernis

https://www.osnews.com/story/146282/enlightenment-0-28-0-released/

#DesktopEnvironments

GEFS on OpenBSD continues to improve

A little while ago, we talked about 9front's Good Enough File System being ported to OpenBSD. A lot of progress has been made on this front lately. Aside from fixing bugs and porting over fixes from the 9front side, there's also been a ton more substantial changes.

Some userspace tools have been done (you can now mkfs on openbsd!), but snapshot control hasn't

https://www.osnews.com/story/146280/gefs-on-openbsd-continues-to-improve/

#OpenBSD

Sam Altman wants to take your RAM

"From a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time," Altman said. "You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment. And somehow many people's intuition i

https://www.osnews.com/story/146277/sam-altman-wants-to-take-your-ram/

#Technofascism

Sculpt OS 26.10 releases

Sculpt OS 26.10 brings quite a few new features, like scalable cursors, support for UK keyboards, better webcam support, and more, but the real meat of this release is much tastier.

First, Sculpt 26.10 is the first version based on Genode's custom microkernel instead of relying on a 3rd-party kernel. This kernel - designed from the ground up for the needs of Genode and Sculpt OS in p

https://www.osnews.com/story/146275/sculpt-os-26-10-releases/

#Genode

How long do you need to hold down the power button to turn off a PC?

Raymond Chen published another story from the Windows development trenches, this time about what happens when you hold down the power button.

If you hold a PC’s power button for 12 seconds, it will turn off at the hardware level without notifying the operating system. This is a safety feature so t

https://www.osnews.com/story/146273/how-long-do-you-need-to-hold-down-the-power-button-to-turn-off-a-pc/

#Windows

How curl was accidentally Turing-complete for nine months

From curl 8.12 through 8.16, config files could slice variable values and include other config files without an explicit depth cap. Together, these features let curl simulate any two-counter Minsky program. Under the usual idealization of unbounded strings and resources, this construction was Turing-complete.

Curl 8.1

https://www.osnews.com/story/146271/how-curl-was-accidentally-turing-complete-for-nine-months/

#Internet

AlpineBSD combines NetBSD with Alpine’s apk package manager

AlpineBSD is an operating system based on the NetBSD kernel with a userspace inspired by Alpine Linux and the objective of making it possible to use as little AI-generated software as possible. There is no LLM output included in the base system or main package repository (AlpineBSD AI policy).
↫ AlpineBSD's website

https://www.osnews.com/story/146267/alpinebsd-combines-netbsd-with-alpines-apk-package-manager/

#NetBSD

“My favourite PowerMac is a Nintendo Wii”

The Nintendo Wii (and its related consoles) were already made to run the PowerPC version of Windows NT as well as Mac OS X, but now we can add another milestone to the list: classic Mac OS.

So today I reached a nice milestone in one of my projects: my work porting classic Mac OS to PowerPC systems with what I affectionately call ArtX chipsets (Ninte

https://www.osnews.com/story/146265/my-favourite-powermac-is-a-nintendo-wii/

#macOS

Microsoft hopefully fixes Modern Standby and adds online Windows reinstallation

I think it's safe to say that Windows' Modern Standby feature isn't exactly free from issues. The biggest problem seems to be that it's not very good at actually determining when to transition between regular sleep and hibernation, often leaving users with an empty battery as th

https://www.osnews.com/story/146263/microsoft-hopefully-fixes-modern-standby-and-adds-online-windows-reinstallation/

#Windows

NetBSD adds nano-like text editor to base system

Flag LinuxNetBSD made a seemingly small, but very welcome announcement today: they're adding a more user-friendly, easier to use command-line text editor to the base install.

To ease the transition for new users, NetBSD -current now includes an alternative editor to vi(1) and xedit(1) in its base system, atto(1).

It is a modeless scr

https://www.osnews.com/story/146256/netbsd-adds-nano-like-text-editor-to-base-system/

#NetBSD

Sylphide OS: an operating system for computers based on microcontrollers

Do you want a hobby operating system with a desktop for a microcontroller-based computer? Sylphide OS is a new project aiming to build just that.

For the last few weeks, I’ve worked on a new pet project: an operating system for computers based on microcontrollers. There aren’t many yet, but

https://www.osnews.com/story/146248/sylphide-os-an-operating-system-for-computers-based-on-microcontrollers/

#OSNews

Windows CLAT is now generally available

Windows 11 25H2, starting with build 26200.9550, now comes with something called CLAT.

As organizations move toward IPv6-only and IPv6-mostly networks, some applications still depend on IPv4-only applications or services. Windows CLAT helps those applications continue to work when a network does not provide native IPv4 connectivity.

CLAT is the clien

https://www.osnews.com/story/146254/windows-clat-is-now-generally-available/

#Windows

Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11

What's the oldest Windows GUI application you can still run on Windows 11 today, without any modifications? For now, the best answer Boris Popik can come up with is an innocuous application from build 347 of Windows NT 3.1, an early prerelease: CDPLAYER.EXE. You can't go any older than that, because earlier prerelease builds had no

https://www.osnews.com/story/146242/oldest-gui-application-that-still-runs-on-windows-11/

#Windows

Another month of Redox improvements

Another month has crumbled to dust under the oppressive boots of time, so it's time for another month of Redox improvements. This past month, Redox' build system gained support for Clang, SDL2 saw performance improvements, and WebKitGTK3's HTML layout rendering was fixed. Users of Intel Tiger Lake processors can now enjoy external display hot-plugging, and overall

https://www.osnews.com/story/146240/another-month-of-redox-improvements/

#RedoxOS

Microsoft.UI.Reactor: a C#-first way to build WinUI apps

Thew day ends in a Y, so Microsoft is launching a new way to build Windows applications. Get excited, Windows application developers!

If you caught our session at Microsoft Build 2026 or you’ve been watching the repo, you’ve seen this one taking shape in public for a while now, and a lot has changed since Build. Here’s th

https://www.osnews.com/story/146238/microsoft-ui-reactor-a-c-first-way-to-build-winui-apps/

#Windows

MacOS Extensions pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0

We've been following along with Carmen Kaiser's Apple Network Server exploits, and by now things are really starting to come together for owners of this machine. When we last left off, the ROM to allow Mac OS to run on the machine which normally runs IBM's AIX, but there were still a number of bugs, limitations, and issues to b

https://www.osnews.com/story/146236/macos-extensions-pack-for-the-apple-network-server-v1-0/

#Apple

CoW, which (sort-of) brings FVWM to Wayland, reaches version 0.4

Thomas Adam, one of the core developers of FVWM, has been working on CoW for a while now. CoW can best be described as "FVWM for Wayland", which uniquely uses the River compositor. River, in turn, is unique in that it does not combine the compositor and window manager into a single program, allowing for a more t

https://www.osnews.com/story/146233/cow-which-sort-of-brings-fvwm-to-wayland-reaches-version-0-4/

#Wayland

The many many missed opportunities of Sonic 06

Speaking of games, if you've ever hard anything about or even played Sonic '06, you know this wasn't the most polished entry in the hedgehog's franchise. In fact, it's probably one of the worst, and considering the average quality of Sonic games, that's quite an achievement. The team that's working on decompiling the game to make it run on the P

https://www.osnews.com/story/146230/the-many-many-missed-opportunities-of-sonic-06/

#Games

How to run a city builder on 16 MHz

When thinking about impressive technical achievements in retro games, most people will first point to graphical milestones set by action games like Doom or Quake. Rightfully so, but at least I am personally far more impressed by the early examples of the city builder genre. Simulating whole economies on a large scale with a fraction of today’s power seems impossible

https://www.osnews.com/story/146228/how-to-run-a-city-builder-on-16-mhz/

#Games

“I can’t believe PowerShell is actually good”

Earlier this year, I needed to learn PowerShell scripting for one Windows-related project, and I have tried it out a few more times on Mac. It has quickly become one of my favorite tools for automation and scripting—taking on jobs that I would have otherwise tried to do with Node.js, Shortcuts, macOS Automator, or heaven forbid, Ba

https://www.osnews.com/story/146222/i-cant-believe-powershell-is-actually-good/

#GeneralDevelopment