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Every single donation, large or small, is deeply appreciated and keeps the lights on around here. There aren’t many websites like OSNews left, especially not independent ones that answer to nobody. Your support keeps OSNews going, with June 2026 marking a special moment for me: it will mark twenty years since I took over this place. I’m not expecting a party – you’re paying me to work, not to party – but it is still a meaningful anniversary for me personally.

Some of you may be aware of rePalm, a project by Dmitry Grinberg to port the PalmOS to various devices it was never supposed to run on. We covered rePalm back in 2019 and again in 2023. His latest project involved porting PalmOS to a set of digital toys that were never intended to run PalmOS in any way.

Fisher-Price (owned by Mattel) produced some toys in the early 2000 under the Pixter brand. They were touchscreen-based drawing toys, with cartridge-based extra games one could plug in. Pixter devices of the first three generations (“classic”, “plus”, and “2.0”) featured 80×80 black-and-white screens, which makes them of no interest for rePalm. The last two generations of Pixter (“color” and “multimedia”) featured 160×160 color displays. Now, this was more like it! Pixter was quite popular, as far as kids’ toys go, in USA in the early 2000s. A friend brought it to my attention a year ago as a potential rePalm target. The screen resolution was right and looking inside a “Pixter Color” showed an ARM SoC – a Sharp LH75411. The device had sound (games made noises), and touch panel was resistive. In theory – a viable rePalm target indeed.

↫ Dmitry Grinberg

Considering the immensely limited ARMv7 implementation he had to deal with – no cache, no memory management unit, no memory protection unit – it’s a miracle Grinberg managed to succeed. To make matters even harder, the first revision boards of the “color” model only had 1MB of flash, which is incredibly small even for PalmOS 5, so he had to rewrite parts of it to make it fit. Implementing communication over infrared was also a major difficulty, but that, too he managed to get working – on a device that doesn’t have IrDA SIR modulation. Wild.

Grinberg went above and beyond, making sure the buttons on the devices work, developing and building a way to put PalmOS on a “game” cartridge, reverse-engineering the display controller to make sure things like brightness adjustment works, adding screen type detection for that one small run of Pixter Color devices that came with a TFT instead of an STN screen, and so, so much more. Until you read the article, you have no idea how much work Grinberg put into this project.

I continue to be in awe of Grinberg’s work every time I come across it.

Oracle has released Solaris 11.4 SRU 87, which brings with it a whole slew of changes, updates, and fixes. Primarily, it upgrades Firefox and Thunderbird to their latest ESR 140.3.0 releases, and adds GCC 15, alongside a ton of updated other open source packages. On more Solaris 11-specific notes, useradd’s account activation options have been changed to address some issues caused by stricter enforcement introduced in SRU 78, there’s some preparations for the upgrade to BIND 9.20 in a future Solaris 11 release, a few virtualisation improvements, and much more.

If you’re unclear about the relationship between this new release and the Common Build Environment or CBE release of Solaris 11.4 for enthusiasts, released earlier this year, the gist is that these SRU updates are only available to people with Oracle Solaris support contracts, while any updates to the CBE release are available to mere mortals like you and I. If you have a support contract and are using the CBE, you can upgrade from the CBE to the official SRU releases, but without such a contract, you’re out of luck.

A new CBE release is in the works, and is planned to arrive in 2026 – which is great news, but I would love for the enthusiast variant of Solaris 11.4 to receive more regular updates. I don’t think making these SRU updates available to enthusiasts in a non-commercial, zero-warranty kind of way would pose any kind of threat to Oracle’s bottom line, but alas, I don’t run a business like Oracle so perhaps I’m wrong.

This is the website for APL9, which is an APL implementation written in C on and for Plan 9 (9front specifically, but the other versions should work as well).

Work started in January 2022, when I wanted to do some APL programming on 9front, but no implementation existed. The focus has been on adding features and behaving (on most points) like Dyalog APL. Speed is poor, since many primitives are implemented in terms of each other, which is not optimal, but it helped me implement stuff easier.

↫ APL9 website

I honestly have no idea what to say.

I would think most of us here at OSNews are aware of VisiOn, the graphical multitasking operating system for the IBM PC which was one of the first operating systems with a graphical user interface, predating Windows, GEM, the Mac, and even the Apple Lisa. While VisiOn was technically an “open” platform anybody could develop an application for, the operating system’s SDK cost $7000 at the time and required a VAX system. This, combined with VisiOn failing in the market, means nobody knows how to develop an application for it.

Until now. Over the past few months, Nina Kalinina painstakingly unraveled VisiOn so that she she could recreate the SDK from scratch. In turn, this allowed developer Atsuko to develop a clean-room application for VisiOn – which is most likely the very first third-party application ever developed and released for VisiOn. I’ve been following along with the pains Kalinina had to go through for this endeavour over on Fedi, and it sure was a wild ride few would be willing (and capable) to undertake.

It took me a month of working 1-2 hours a day to produce a specification that allowed Atsuko to implement a clean-room homebrew application for VisiOn that is capable of bitmap display, menus and mouse handling.

If you’re wondering what it felt like: this project is the largest “Sudoku puzzle” I have ever tried to solve. In this note, I have tried to explain the process of solving this puzzle, as well as noteworthy things about VisiOn and its internals.

↫ Nina Kalinina

The article contains both a detailed look at VisiOn, as well as the full process of recreating its SDK and developing an application with it. Near the end of the article, after going over all the work that was required to get here, there’s a sobering clarification:

This reverse-engineering project ended up being much bigger than I anticipated. We have a working application, yes, but so far I’ve documented less than 10% of all the VisiHost and VisiOp calls. We still don’t know how to implement keyboard input, or how to work with timers and background processes (if it is possible).

↫ Nina Kalinina

I’d love for more people to be interested in helping this effort out, as it’s not just an extremely difficult challenge, but also a massive contribution to software preservation. VisiOn may not be more than a small footnote in computing history, but it still deserves to be remembered and understood, and Kalinina and Atsuko have done an amazing amount of legwork for whomever wants to pick this up, too.

Did you know that BG3 players exploit children? Are you aware that Qi2 slows older Pixels? If we wrote those misleading headlines, readers would rip us a new one — but Google is experimentally beginning to replace the original headlines on stories it serves with AI nonsense like that.

↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge

I’m a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, hear me shout. Tip me over and pour me out!

An exciting tidbit of news from Redox, the Rust-based operating system. Its founder and lead developer Jeremy Soller has merged the first changes for a modesetting driver for Intel graphics.

After a few nights of reading through thousands of pages of PRMs I have finally implemented a modesetting driver for Intel HD graphics on Redox OS. There is much more to do, but there is now a clear path to native hardware accelerated graphics!

↫ Jeremy Soller

Of course, all the usual disclaimers apply, but it’s an important first step, and once again underlines that Redox is turning into a very solid platform that might just be on the cusp of becoming something we can use every day.

It’s always a bit sad and a little awkward when reality starts hitting long-time fans and users of an operating system, isn’t it? I feel like I’m at least fifteen years ahead of everyone else when it comes to macOS, at least.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been discovering problems that have been eroding confidence in macOS. From text files that simply won’t show up in Spotlight search, to Clock timers that are blank and don’t function, there’s one common feature: macOS encounters an error or fault, but doesn’t report that to the user, instead just burying it deep in the log.

When you can spare the time, the next step is to contact Apple Support, who seem equally puzzled. You’re eventually advised to reinstall macOS or, in the worst case, to wipe a fairly new Apple silicon Mac and restore it in DFU mode, but have no reason to believe that will stop the problem from recurring. You know that Apple Support doesn’t understand what’s going wrong, and despite the involvement of support engineers, they seem as perplexed as you.

↫ Howard Oakley

I remember when Mac OS X was so far ahead of the competition it was honestly a little tragic. Around the late PowerPC and very early Intel days, when the iPhone hadn’t yet had the impact on the company it has now, the Mac and its operating system were the star of the company’s show, and you felt it when you used it. Even though the late PowerPC hardware was being outpaced left, right, and centre by Intel and AMD hardware in virtually every sense, Mac OS X more than made up for it being being a carefully and lovingly crafted operating system designed and developed by people who clearly deeply cared.

I used nothing but Macs as a result.

These days, everything’s reversed. By all accounts, Macs are doing amazing hardware-wise, with efficient, powerful processors and solid design. The operating system, however, has become a complete and utter mess, showing us that no, merely having great hardware does not make up for shit software in the same way the reverse was true two decades ago. I’d rather use a slower, hotter laptop with great software than a faster, cooler laptop with terrible software.

I’m not sure we’re going to see this trend reversed any time soon. Apple, too, is chasing the dragon, and everything the company does is designed around their cash cow, and I just don’t see how that’s going to change without a complete overhaul of the company’s leadership.

OK I promised computers, so let’s move to the Tek 4051 I got! Released in 1975, this was based on the 4010 series of terminals, but with a Motorola 6800 computer inside. This machine ran, like so many at the time, BASIC, but with extra subroutines for drawing and manipulating vector graphics. 8KB RAM was standard, but up to 32KB RAM could be installed. Extra software was installed via ROM modules in the back, for example to add DSP routines. Data could be saved on tape, and via RS232 and GBIP external devices could be attached!

All in all, a pretty capable machine, especially in 1975. BASIC computers where getting common, but graphics was pretty new. According to Tektronix the 4051 was ideal for researches, analysts and physicians, and this could be yours for the low low price of 6 grand, or around $36.000 in 2025. I could not find sales figures, but it seems that this was a decently successful machine. Tektronix also made the 4052, with a faster CPU, and the 4054, a 19″ 4K resolution behemoth! Tektronix continued making workstations until the 90s but like almost all workstations of the era, x86/Linux eventually took over the entire workstation market.

↫ Rik te Winkel at Just another electronics blog

Now that’s a retro computer you don’t see very often.

The FreeBSD team has released FreeBSD 15.0, and with it come several major changes, one of which you will surely want to know more about if you’re a FreeBSD user. Since this change will eventually drastically change the way you use FreeBSD, we should get right into it.

Up until now, a full, system-wide update for FreeBSD – as in, updating both the base operating system as well as any packages you have installed on top of it – would use two separate tools: freebsd-update and the pkg package manager. You used the former to update the base operating system, which was installed as file sets, and the latter to update everything you had installed on top of it in the form of packages.

With FreeBSD 15.0, this is starting to change. Instead of using two separate tools, in 15.0 you can opt to deprecate freebsd-update and file sets, and rely entirely on pkg for updating both the base operating system as well as any packages you have installed, because with this new method, the base system moves from file sets to packages. When installing FreeBSD 15.0, the installer will ask you to choose between the old method, or the new pkg-only method.

Packages (pkgbase / New Method): The base system is installed as a set of packages from the “FreeBSD-base” repository. Systems installed this way are managed entirely using the pkg(8) tool. This method is used by default for all VM images and images published in public clouds. In FreeBSD 15.0, pkgbase is offered as a technology preview, but it is expected to become the standard method for managing base system installations and upgrades in future releases.

↫ FreeBSD 15.0 release announcement

As the release announcement notes, the net method is optional in FreeBSD 15 and will remain optional during the entire 15.x release cycle, but the plan is to deprecate freebsd-update and file sets entirely in FreeBSD 16.0. If you have an existing installation you wish to convert to using pkgbase, there’s a tool called pkgbasify to do just that. It’s sponsored by the FreeBSD Foundation, so it’s not some random script.

Of course, there’s way more in this release than just pkgbase. Of note is that the 32bit platforms i386, armv6, and 32-bit powerpc have been retired, but of course, 32bit code will continue to run on their 64bit counterparts. FreeBSD 15.0 also brings a native inotify implementation, a ton of improvements to the audio components, improved Intel Wi-Fi drivers, and so, so much more.

What do you do if you develop a lightweight browser that doesn’t support JavaScript, but you once chose GitHub as the home for your code? You’re now in the unenviable position that your own browser can no longer access your own online source repository because it requires JavaScript, which is both annoying and, well, a little awkward. The solution is, of course, obvious: you move somewhere else.

That’s exactly what the Dillo browser did. They set up a small VPS, opted for cgit as the git frontend for its performance and small size, and for the bug tracker, they created a brand new, very simple bug tracker.

To avoid this problem, I created my own bug tracker software, buggy, which is a very simple C tool that parses plain Markdown files and creates a single HTML page for each bug. All bugs are stored in a git repository and a git hook regenerates the bug pages and the index on each new commit. As it is simply plain text, I can edit the bugs locally and only push them to the remote when I have Internet back, so it works nice offline. Also, as the output is just an static HTML site, I don’t need to worry about having any vulnerabilities in my code, as it will only run at build time.

↫ Rodrigo Arias Mallo

There’s more considerations detailed in the article about Dillo’s migration, and it can serve as inspiration for anyone else running a small open source project who wishes to leave GitHub behind. With GitHub’s continuing to add more and more complexity and “AI” to separate open source code from its licensing terms, we may see more and more projects giving GitHub the finger.

Landlock is a Linux API that lets applications explicitly declare which resources they are allowed to access. Its philosophy is similar to OpenBSD’s unveil() and (less so) pledge(): programs can make a contract with the kernel stating, “I only need these files or resources — deny me everything else if I’m compromised.”

It provides a simple, developer-friendly way to add defense-in-depth to applications. Compared to traditional Linux security mechanisms, Landlock is vastly easier to understand and integrate.

This post is meant to be an accessible introduction, and hopefully persuade you to give Landlock a try.

↫ prizrak.me blog

I had no idea this existed, even though it seems to plug a hole in the security and sandboxing landscape on Linux by not requiring any privileges and by being relatively simple and straightforward to use. There’s even an additional “supervisor” proposal that would bring Android-like permissions not just to, say, desktop applications (see Flatpak), but to every process trying to access anything for the first time.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to make any statements about Landlock compared to any other options we have for securing desktop Linux in a user-friendly, non-intrusive manner, but I definitely like its simplicity.

The release 25.11 wraps up our year of “rigidity, clarity, performance” with a bouquet of vast under-the-hood improvements. Genode’s custom kernel received special tuning of its new CPU scheduler for Sculpt-OS workloads, and became much more scalable with respect to virtual-memory management. Combined, those efforts visibly boost the performance of Sculpt OS on performance-starved hardware like the PinePhone or the i.MX8-based MNT Reform laptop. On account of improving clarity, our new configuration format – now named human-inclined data (HID) – proliferates throughout Genode’s tooling. We are also happy to report that almost all Genode components have become interoperable with both XML and HID by now.

↫ Genode OS Framework 25.11 release notes

The Genode Framework 25.11 also brings a major change to how important shared components that aren’t strictly part of the framework are handled, such as ports like libSDL, sqlite, or gnutls. Before, these could only be built with the Genode build system, which was suboptimal because this isn’t designed for building individual components. Several changes have been made to now enable the use of multiple build systems and the Goa SDK, which should make it a lot easier to these crucial components to become the responsibility of wider parts of the community.

There’s way more, of course, such as the usual driver improvements, including the addition of support for serial-to-USB adapters.

During a Dell earnings call, the company mentioned some staggering numbers regarding the amount of PCs that will not or cannot be upgraded to Windows 11.

“We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven’t been upgraded,” said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell’s slice of machines. “And we have another 500 million that are four years old that can’t run Windows 11.” He sees this as an opportunity to guide customers towards the latest Windows 11 machines and AI PCs, but warns that the PC market is going to be relatively flat next year.

↫ Tom Warren at The Verge

The monumental scale of the Windows 10 install base that simply won’t or cannot upgrade to Windows 11 is massive, and it’s absolutely bonkers to me that we’re mostly just letting them get away with leaving at least a billion users out in the cold when it comes to security updates and bug fixes. The US government (in better times) and the EU should’ve 100% forced Microsoft’s hand, as leaving this many people on outdated, unsupported operating system installations is several disasters waiting to happen.

Aside from the dangerous position Microsoft is forcing its Windows 10 users into, there’s also the massive environmental and public health impact of huge swaths of machines, especially in enterprise environments, becoming obsolete overnight. Many of these will end up in landfills, often shipped to third-world countries so we in the west don’t have to deal with our e-waste and its dangerous consequences directly. I can get fined for littering – rightfully so – but when a company like Microsoft makes sweeping decisions which cause untold amounts of dangerous chemicals to be dumped in countless locations all over the globe, governments shrug it off and move on.

At least we will get some cheap eBay hardware out of it, I guess.