Notices by OSNews (osnews@mstdn.social), page 2

Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026

In October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will reach its end of life. After that time, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365 and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported. Microsoft 365 subscribers will no longer be able to open or edit Publisher files in Publisher. Until then, support f

https://www.osnews.com/story/141865/microsoft-publisher-will-no-longer-be-supported-after-october-2026/

#Office

Zen and the art of microcode hacking

Now that we have examined the vulnerability that enables arbitrary microcode patches to be installed on all (un-patched) Zen 1 through Zen 4 CPUs, let's discuss how you can use and expand our tools to author your own patches. We have been working on developing a collection of tools combined into a single project we’re calling zentool. The long-term goal is to provide

https://www.osnews.com/story/141867/zen-and-the-art-of-microcode-hacking/

#AMD

Mozilla deletes promise not to sell Firefox users’ data

The hits just keep on coming. Mozilla not only changed its Privacy Notice and introduced a Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time with some pretty onerous terms, they also removed a rather specific question and answer pair from their page with frequently asked questions about Firefox, as discovered by David Gerard.

https://www.osnews.com/story/141825/mozilla-deletes-promise-not-to-sell-firefox-users-data/

#MozillaGecko

zlib-rs is faster than C

I'm sure we can all have a calm, rational discussion about this, so here it goes: zlib-rs, the Rust re-implementation of the zlib library, is now faster than its C counterparts in both decompression and compression.

We've released version 0.4.2 of zlib-rs, featuring a number of substantial performance improvements. We are now (to our knowledge) the fastest api-compatible

https://www.osnews.com/story/141809/zlib-rs-is-faster-than-c/

#GeneralDevelopment

Mozilla reaffirms it won’t remove Manifest v2 support from Firefox

Mozilla has officially reiterated that it's going to keep offering support for both Manifest v2 and Manifest v3 extensions in Firefox. Google is removing support for Manifest v2 from Chrome, and with it a feature called blockingWebRequest that is used by ad blockers like uBlock Origin. Google's rep

https://www.osnews.com/story/141805/mozilla-reaffirms-it-wont-remove-manifest-v2-support-from-firefox/

#MozillaGecko

12 years of incubating Wayland color management

The Wayland color-management protocol extension has landed on Feb 13th, 2025, in upstream wayland-protocols repository in the staging directory. It was released with wayland-protocols 1.41. The extension enables proper interactions between traditional (sRGB), Wide Color Gamut (WCG), and High Dynamic Range (HDR) image sources and displays onc

https://www.osnews.com/story/141803/12-years-of-incubating-wayland-color-management/

#Wayland

Trans rights are human rights. This is a non-negotiable fact. No ifs, buts or maybes.

This new page is now linked to very clearly on our front page.
https://www.osnews.com/trans-rights-are-human-rights/

Unlike most other tech media, we will not be wishy-washy or even silent about what's happening to trans people in the US.

Flathub safety: a layered approach from source to user

About two weeks ago we talked about why Fedora manages its own Flatpak repository, and why that sometimes leads to problems with upstream projects. Most recently, Fedora's own OBS Flatpak was broken, leading to legal threats from the OBS project, demanding Fedora remove any and all branding from its OBS Flatpak. In response, Fedor

https://www.osnews.com/story/141777/flathub-safety-a-layered-approach-from-source-to-user/

#Linux

Chromium Ozone/Wayland: the last mile stretch

Lets start with some context, the project consists of implementing, shipping and maintaining native Wayland support in the Chromium project. Our team at Igalia has been leading the effort since it was first merged upstream back in 2016. For more historical context, there are a few blog posts and this amazing talk, by my colleagues Antonio Gomes

https://www.osnews.com/story/141771/chromium-ozone-wayland-the-last-mile-stretch/

#Internet

Microsoft is paywalling features in Notepad and Paint

There’s some bad news for Windows users who want to use all of the built-in features of the operating system and its integrated apps. Going forward, Microsoft is restricting features in two iconic apps, which you’ll need to unlock with a paid subscription.

The two apps in question? Notepad and Paint. [...]

Windows Insiders

https://www.osnews.com/story/141773/microsoft-is-paywalling-features-in-notepad-and-paint/

#Windows

1972 UNIX V2 “beta” resurrected from old tapes

There's a number of backups of old DECtapes from Dennis Ritchie, which he gave to Warren Toomey in 1997. The tapes were eventually uploaded, and through analysis performed by Yufeng Gao, a lot of additional details, code, and software were recovered from them. A few days ago, Gao came back with the results from their analys of two more tapes, a

https://www.osnews.com/story/141769/1972-unix-v2-beta-resurrected-from-old-tapes/

#Unix

ArcaOS 5.1.1 released

It's been two years since the release of ArcaOS 5.1, which was a hugely important release because it brought UEFI support to this continuation of IBM's OS/2, ensuring longevity for the project for years to come. Since I don't think much is known about what, exactly, Arca Noae, and eComStation before it, has access to within the licensing agreement with IBM, it's difficult to ascertain just how mu

https://www.osnews.com/story/141738/arcaos-5-1-1-released/

#OS2

Fedora should not push its users to its own Flatpak repository

Unlike most (all?) other distributions with built-in Flatpak support, Fedora maintains its own repository of Flatpak applications. Everyone else defaults to using Flathub, where developers of applications themselves tend to publish their Flatpaks. Fedora's 'shadow Flathub' sometimes leads to problems, with Fe

https://www.osnews.com/story/141723/fedora-should-not-push-its-users-to-its-own-flatpak-repository/

#FedoraCore

UnixWare in 2025: still actively developed and maintained

It kind of goes by under the radar, but aside from HP-UX, Solaris, and AIX, there's another traditional classic UNIX still in active development today: UnixWare (and its sibling, OpenServer). Owned and developed by Xinuos, UnixWare and other related code and IP was acquired by them when the much-hated SCO crashed and burned a

https://www.osnews.com/story/141690/unixware-in-2025-still-actively-developed-and-maintained/

#Unix

GTK announces X11 deprecation, new Android backend, and much more

Since a number of GTK developer came together at FOSDEM, the project figured now was as good a time as any to give an update on what's coming in GTK. First, GTK is implementing some hard cut-offs for old platforms - Windows 10 and macOS 10.15 are now the oldest supported versions, which will make development qui

https://www.osnews.com/story/141670/gtk-announces-x11-deprecation-new-android-backend-and-much-more/

#GTK

NixBSD: an unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel

NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution.
↫ NixBSD GitHub page

Look, it's my job to make sure I use and am familiar with as many operating

https://www.osnews.com/story/141598/nixbsd-an-unofficial-nixos-fork-with-a-freebsd-kernel/

#BSDDarwin

9front “THIS TIME DEFINITELY” released

The operating system I'm not cool enough to run has pushed out a new release: 9front “THIS TIME DEFINITELY” is now available. 9front is a fork of plan9, created after plan9 languished at Bell Labs. This release enables gefs, the new file system, in the installer, "ip/ipconfig now support dhcpv6 dynamic allocations and handles prefix expirations", and it come

https://www.osnews.com/story/141590/9front-this-time-definitely-released/

#OSNews

How UNIX spell ran in 64kB RAM

How do you fit a 250kB dictionary in 64kB of RAM and still perform fast lookups? For reference, even with modern compression techniques like gzip -9, you can't compress this file below 85kB.

In the 1970s, Douglas McIlroy faced this exact challenge while implementing the spell checker for Unix at AT&T. The constraints of the PDP-11 computer meant the entire dictionary needed

https://www.osnews.com/story/141586/how-unix-spell-ran-in-64kb-ram/

#Unix

Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search

Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search.

In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spa

https://www.osnews.com/story/141570/google-begins-requiring-javascript-for-google-search/

#Google

Google announces it’s going to intentionally violate EU law

Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios.

[...]

In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the conte

https://www.osnews.com/story/141558/google-announces-its-going-to-intentionally-violate-eu-law/

#Google