Remember earlier this year, when Android Authority discovered Google was experimenting with letting you run full Chrome OS on your Android device? In case you were wondering if that particular piece of spaghetti was sticking to the wall, I’m sorry to disappoint you it isn’t. Despite creating the Ferrochrome launcher app, which would’ve made the whole thing a one-click affair, Google has just removed the whole concept from the Android code base altogether.

Unfortunately, though, Google has decided to kill its Ferrochrome launcher app. This was revealed to us by a code change recently submitted to the AOSP Gerrit. The code change, which hasn’t been merged yet, removes the entire Ferrochrome launcher app from AOSP. Google’s reason for removing this app is that it doesn’t plan to ship it or maintain its code. It seems that Google is shifting towards using the Linux-based Debian distro instead of Chrome OS as its testbed for AVF development.

↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority

I’m not really sure if people were really asking for something like this, and to Google’s credit – for once – the company never even so much as hinted at releasing this to the general public. Still, the idea of carrying just your phone with you as your primary computer, and plugging into a display and input devices as the need arises, remains something a lot of people are fascinated with, and putting Chrome OS on your Android phone would’ve been one way to achieve this goal.

Despite decades of attempts, it seems not even the smartest people in Silicon Valley can crack this nut. Perhaps they should ask Gemini to solve it for them? It doesn’t involve pizza’s, glue, or rocks, so who knows – it might surprise them!

For nearly 15 years, FreeBSD has been at the core of my personal infrastructure, and my passion for it has only grown over time. As a die-hard fan, I’ve stuck with BSD-based systems because they continue to deliver exactly what I need—storage, networking, and security—without missing a beat. The features I initially fell in love with, like ZFS, jails, and pf, are still rock-solid and irreplaceable. There’s no need to overhaul them, and in many ways, that reliability is what keeps me hooked. My scripts from 20 years ago still work, and that’s a rare kind of stability that few platforms can boast.

It’s not just me, either—big names like Netflix, Microsoft, and NetApp, alongside companies like Tailscale and AMD, continue to support FreeBSD, further reinforcing my belief in its strength and longevity (you can find the donators and sponsors right here). Yet, while this familiarity is comforting, it’s becoming clear that FreeBSD must evolve to keep pace with the modern landscape of computing.

↫ gyptazy

It’s good to read so many articles and comments from long-time FreeBSD users and contributors who seem to recognise that there’s a real opportunity for FreeBSD to become more than ‘just’ a solid server operating system. This aligns neatly with FreeBSD itself recognising this, too, and investing in improving the operating system’s support for what are not considered basic laptop features like touchpad gestures and advanced sleep states, among other things.

I’ve long held the belief that the BSDs are far closer to attracting a wider, more general computing-focused audience than even they themselves sometimes seem to think. There’s a real, tangible benefit to the way BSDs are developed and structured – a base system developed by one team – compared to the Linux world, and there’s enough disgruntlement among especially longtime Linux users about things like Wayland and systemd that there’s a pool of potential users to attract that didn’t exist only a few years ago.

If you’re a little unsure about the future of Linux – give one of the BSDs a try. There’s a real chance you’ll love it.

Hot on the heels of releasing Redox 0.9.0, the team is back with yet another monthly update. Understandably, it’s not as massive of an update as other months, but there’s still more than enough here. There’s the usual bug fixes and small changes, but also more work on the port to RISC-V, the QEMU port (as in, running QEMU on Redox), a bunch of improvements to Relibc, and a lot more.

Windows 11 2024 Update, also known as version 24H2, is now publicly available. Microsoft announced the rollout alongside the new AI-powered features that are coming soon to Windows Insiders with Copilot+ PCs and Copilot upgrades.

Unlike recent Windows 11 updates, version 24H2 is a “full operating system swap,” so updating to it will take more time than usual. What is going as usual is the way the update is being offered to users. Microsoft is gradually rolling out the update to “seekers” with Windows 11 versions 22H2 and 23H2. That means you need to go to the Settings app and manually request the update.

↫ Taras Buria at Neowin

I’ve said it a few times before but I completely lost track of how Windows releases and updates work at this point. I thought this version and its features had been available for ages already, but apparently I was wrong, and it’s only being released now. For now, you can get it by opting in through Windows Update, while the update will be pushed to everyone later on. I really wish Microsoft would move to a simpler, more straightforward release model and cadence, but alas.

Anyway, this version brings all the AI/ML CoPilot stuff, WiFi 7 support, improvements to File Explorer and the system tray, the addition of the sudo command, and more. The changes to Explorer are kind of hilarious to me, as Microsoft seems to have finally figured out labels are a good thing – the weird copy/cut/paste buttons in the context menu have labels now – but this enhanced context menu still has its own context menu. Explorer now also comes with support for more compression formats, which is a welcome change in 2007. To gain access to the new sudo command, go to Settings > System > For developers and enable the option.

For the rest, this isn’t a very impactful release, and will do little to convince the much larger Windows 10 userbase to switch to Windows 11, something that’s going to be a real problem for Microsoft in the coming year.

FreeBSD is going to take its desktop use quite a bit more seriously going forward.

FreeBSD has long been a top choice for IT professionals and organizations focused on servers and networking, and it is known for its unmatched stability, performance, and security. However, as technology evolves, FreeBSD faces a significant challenge: supporting modern laptops. To address this, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research has committed $750,000 to improve laptop support, a strategic investment that will be pivotal in FreeBSD’s future.

↫ FreeBSD Foundation blog

So, what are they going to spend this big bag of money on? Well, exactly the kind of things you expect. They want to improve and broaden support for various wireless chipsets, add support for modern powersaving processor states, and make sure laptop-specific features like touchpad gestures, specialty buttons, and so on, work properly. On top of that, they want to invest in better graphics driver support for Intel and AMD, as well as make it more seamless to switch between various audio devices, which is especially crucial on laptops where people might reasonably be expected to use headphones.

In addition, while not specifically related to laptops, FreeBSD also intends to invest in support for heterogeneous cores in its scheduler and improvements to the bhyve hypervisor. Virtualisation is, of course, not just something for large desktops and servers, but also laptop users might turn to for certain tasks and workloads.

The FreeBSD project will be working not just with Quantum Leap Research, but also various hardware makers to assist in bringing FreeBSD’s laptop support to a more modern, plug-and-play state. Additionally, the mentioned cash injection is not set in stone; additional contributions from both individuals and larger organisations are obviously welcome, and of course if you can contribute code, bug reports, documentation, and so on, you’re also more than welcome to jump in.

Recently I came across a minor mystery—the model numbers of the original IBM PC. For such a pivotal product, there is remarkably little detailed original information from the early days.

↫ Michal Necasek

Count me surprised. When I think IBM, I think meticulously documented and detailed bureaucracy, where every screw, nut, and bolt is numbered, documented, and tracked, so much so in fact this all-American company even managed to impress the Germans. You’d expect IBM, of all companies, to have overly detailed lists of every IBM PC it ever designed, manufactured, and sold, but as it turns out, it’s actually quite hard to assemble a complete list of the early IBM PCs the company sold.

The biggest problem are the models from before 1983, since before that year, the IBM PC does not appear in IBM’s detailed archive of announcements. As such, Michal Necasek had to dig into random bits of IBM documentation to assemble references to those earlier models, and while he certainly didn’t find every single one of them, it’s a great start, and others can surely pick up the search from here.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat “disappearing” purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they’re just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it.

When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like “buy” or “purchase,” unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.

↫ Emma Roth at The Verge

A step in the right direction, but a lot more is definitely needed. This law in particular seems to leave a lot of wiggle room for companies to keep using the “purchase” term while hiding the disclosure somewhere in the very, very small fine print. I would much rather a law like this just straight up ban the use of the term “purchase” and similar terms when all you’re getting is a license. Why allow them to keep lying about the nature of the transaction in exchange for some fine print somewhere?

The software industry in particular has been enjoying a free ride when it comes to consumer protection laws, and the kind of malpractice, lack of accountability, and laughable quality control would have any other industry shut down in weeks for severe negligence. We’re taking baby steps, but it seems we’re finally arriving at a point where basic consumer protection laws and rights are being applied to software, too.

Several decades too late, but at least it’s something.

System76, the premiere Linux computer manufacturer and creator of the COSMIC desktop environment, has updated COSMIC’s Alpha release to Alpha 2. The latest release includes more Settings pages, the bulk of functionality for COSMIC Files, highly requested window management features, and considerable infrastructure work for screen reader support, as well as some notable bug fixes.

↫ system76’s blog

The pace of development for COSMIC remains solid, even after the first alpha release. This second alpha keeps adding a lot of things considered basic for any desktop environment, such as settings panels for power and battery, sounds, displays, and many more. It also brings window management support for focus follows cursor and cursor follows focus, which will surely please the very specific, small slice of people who swear by those. Also, you can now disable the super key.

A major new feature that I’m personally very happy about is the “adjust density” feature. COSMIC will allow you to adjust the spacing between the various user interface elements so you can choose to squeeze more information on your screen, which is one of the major complaints I have about modern UI design in macOS, Windows, and GNOME. Being able to adjust this to your liking is incredibly welcome, especially combined with COSMIC’s ability to change from ’rounded’ UI elements to ‘square’ UI elements.

The file manager has also been vastly, vastly improved, tons of bugs were fixed, and much, much more. It seems COSMIC is on the right path, and I can’t wait to try out the first final result once it lands.

Just want to let y’all know that my family and I have been hit hard with bronchitis these past two weeks, and especially my recovery is going quite slowly (our kids are healthy again, and my wife is recovering quite well!). As such, I haven’t been able to do much OSNews work.

I hope things will finally clear up a bit over the weekend so that I can resume normal service come Monday. Enjoy your weekend, y’all!

The push towards memory safe programming languages is strong, and for good reason. However, especially for bigger projects with a lot of code that potentially needs to be rewritten or replaced, you might question if all the effort is even worth it, particularly if all the main contributors would also need to be retrained. Well, it turns out that merely just focusing on writing new code in a memory safe language will drastically reduce the number of memory safety issues in a project as a whole.

Memory safety vulnerabilities remain a pervasive threat to software security. At Google, we believe the path to eliminating this class of vulnerabilities at scale and building high-assurance software lies in Safe Coding, a secure-by-design approach that prioritizes transitioning to memory-safe languages.

This post demonstrates why focusing on Safe Coding for new code quickly and counterintuitively reduces the overall security risk of a codebase, finally breaking through the stubbornly high plateau of memory safety vulnerabilities and starting an exponential decline, all while being scalable and cost-effective.

↫ Jeff Vander Stoep and Alex Rebert at the Google Security Blog

In this blog post, Google highlights that even if you only write new code in a memory-safe language, while only applying bug fixes to old code, the number of memory safety issues will decreases rapidly, even when the total amount of code written in unsafe languages increases. This is because vulnerabilities decay exponentially – in other words, the older the code, the fewer vulnerabilities it’ll have.

In Android, for instance, using this approach, the percentage of memory safety vulnerabilities dropped from 76% to 24% over 6 years, which is a great result and something quite tangible.

Despite the majority of code still being unsafe (but, crucially, getting progressively older), we’re seeing a large and continued decline in memory safety vulnerabilities. The results align with what we simulated above, and are even better, potentially as a result of our parallel efforts to improve the safety of our memory unsafe code. We first reported this decline in 2022, and we continue to see the total number of memory safety vulnerabilities dropping.

↫ Jeff Vander Stoep and Alex Rebert at the Google Security Blog

What this shows is that a large project, like, say, the Linux kernel, for no particular reason whatsoever, doesn’t need to replace all of its code with, say, Rust, again, for no particular reason whatsoever, to reap the benefits of a modern, memory-safe language. Even by focusing on memory-safe languages only for new code, you will still exponentially reduce the number of memory safety vulnerabilities. This is not a new discovery, as it’s something observed and confirmed many times before, and it makes intuitive sense, too; older code has had more time to mature.

Our favorite operating system is now changing the default shell (ksh) to enforce not allowing invalid NUL characters in input that will be parsed as parts of the script.

↫ Undeadly.org

As someone who doesn’t deal with stuff like this – I rarely actively use shell scripts – it seems kind of insane to me that this wasn’t the norm since the beginning.

As part of our vision for simplified Windows management from the cloud, Microsoft has announced deprecation of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Specifically, this means that we are no longer investing in new capabilities, nor are we accepting new feature requests for WSUS. However, we are preserving current functionality and will continue to publish updates through the WSUS channel. We will also support any content already published through the WSUS channel.

↫ Nir Froimovici

What an odd feature to deprecate. Anyone with a large enough fleet of machines probably makes use of Windows Server Update Services, as it adds some much-needed centralised control to the downloading and deployment of Windows updates, so you can do localised partial rollouts for testing, which, as the CrowdStrike debacle showed us once more, is quite important. WSUS also happens to be a local tool, that is set up and run locally, instead of in the cloud, and that’s where we get to the real reason WSUS is being deprecated.

Microsoft is advising IT managers who use WSUS to switch to Microsoft’s alternatives, like Windows Autopatch, Microsoft Intune, and Azure Update Manager. These all happen to run in the cloud, giving up that control WSUS provided by running locally, and they’re not free either – they’re subscription services, of course. I mean, technically WSUS isn’t free either as it’s part of Windows Server, but these cloud services come on top of the cost of Windows Server itself.

Nobody escapes the relentless march of subscription costs.

On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space.

↫ Richard Lawler and Sean Hollister at The Verge

Either Qualcomm is only interested in buying certain parts of Intel’s business, or we’re dealing with someone trying to mess with stock prices for personal gain. The idea of Qualcomm acquiring Intel seems entirely outlandish to me, and that’s not even taking into account that regulators will probably have a thing or two to say about this. The one thing such a crazy deal would have going for it is that it would create a pretty strong and powerful all-American chip giant, which is a PR avenue the companies might explore if this is really serious.

One of the most valuable assets Intel has is the x86 architecture and the associated patents and licensing deals, and the immense market power that comes with those. Perhaps Qualcomm is interested in designing x86 chips, or, more likely, perhaps they’re interested in all that sweet, sweet licensing money they could extract by allowing more companies to design and sell x86 processors. The x86 market currently consists almost exclusively of Intel and AMD, a situation which may be leaving a lot of licensing money on the table.

Pondering aside, I highly doubt this is anything other than an overblown, misinterpreted story.

Can you run Linux on the Intel 4004, the first commercially produced microprocessor, released to the world in 1971? Well, Dmitry Grinberg, the genius engineer who got Linux to run on all kinds of incredibly underpowered hardware, sought to answer this very important question. In short, yes, you can run Linux on the 4004, but much as with other extremely limited and barebones chips, you have to get… Creative. Very creative.

Of course, Linux cannot and will not boot on a 4004 directly. There is no C compiler targeting the 4004, nor could one be created due to the limitations of the architecture. The amount of ROM and RAM that is addressable is also simply too low. So, same as before, I would have to resort to emulation. My initial goal was to fit into 4KB of code, as that is what an unmodified unassisted 4004 can address. 4KB of code is not much at all to emulate a complete system. After studying the options, it became clear that MIPS R3000 would be the winner here. Every other architecture I considered would be harder to emulate in some way. Some architectures had arbitrarily-shifted operands all the time (ARM), some have shitty addressing modes necessitating that they would be slow (RISCV), some would need more than 4KB to even decode instructions (x86), and some were just too complex to emulate in so little space (PPC). … so … MIPS again… OK!

↫ Dmitry Grinberg

This is just one very small aspect of this massive undertaking, and the article and videos accompanying his success are incredibly detailed and definitely not for the faint of heart. The amount of skill, knowledge, creativity, and persistence on display here is stunning, and many of us can only dream of being able to do stuff like this. I absolutely love it.

Of course, the Linux kernel had to be slimmed down considerably, as a lot of stuff currently in the kernel are of absolutely no use on such an old system. Boot time is measured in days, still, but it helped a lot. Grinberg also turned the whole setup into what is effectively an art piece you can hang on the wall, where you can have it run and, well, do things – not much, of course, but he did include a small program that draws mandelbrot set on the VFD and serial port, which is a neat trick.

He plans on offering the whole thing as a kit, but a lot of it depends on getting enough of the old chips to offer a complete, ready-to-assemble kit in the first place.