This is a list of software and ideas developed or maintained by the OpenBSD project, sorted in order of approximate introduction. Some of them are explained in detail in our research papers. That’s an impressive list.

As some of us learned in the last week, it’s easy to uninstall a troublesome Rapid Security Response (RSR). Several naturally asked why that isn’t possible with a macOS update, pointing out that it was available and worryingly popular between High Sierra and Catalina 10.15.2, since when the ability has been lost. The answer is as straightforward as you’d expect: the updates themselves, as well as the update process, have become more complicated than they used to be, and rollback would be difficult to implement. As such, the advice for those unhappy with a new macOS version is as simple as it is disruptive: For those who decide that they want to roll back a macOS update on an Apple silicon Mac, by far the simplest procedure is to back the Mac up fully, put it into DFU mode, use Configurator 2 to restore the IPSW image for the previous version of macOS including its firmware, then to migrate the backup to that fresh boot disk. That also caters for all problems that may have arisen with the update. Apple always moves forwards, never backwards – even when you might want to.

Microsoft ended Windows Server 2003’s Mainstream Support on July 13, 2010, and Extended Support on July 14, 2015. This means it would no longer provide security updates, technical support, or software updates for this server-based operating system. Windows Server 2003 is probably my favourite Windows release. I never liked Windows XP, and Server 2003, with its updated codebase and various fixes compared to XP, provided a more solid alternative at the time. There was this whole cottage industry of people aiding each other in converting Windows Server 2003 into a more desktop-friendly operating system through reactivating services, installing additional components, applying registry changes, and so on. It was a bit of work post-install, but once done, you had a more stable, more solid, and safer “version” of Windows XP. At least, that was the theory. I have no idea if this was actually true, or if a fully updated Windows XP installation was, in fact, functionally equivalent and that Server 2003 provided zero material benefit.

In case you missed it, Red Hat announced they will no longer be providing the means for downstream clones to continue to be 1:1 binary copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Very quickly, both Jack and I shared some initial thoughts, but we intentionally took our time deciding the next right step for AlmaLinux OS. After much discussion, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation board today has decided to drop the aim to be 1:1 with RHEL. AlmaLinux OS will instead aim to be Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible. For a typical user, this will mean very little change in your use of AlmaLinux. Red Hat-compatible applications will still be able to run on AlmaLinux OS, and your installs of AlmaLinux will continue to receive timely security updates. The most remarkable potential impact of the change is that we will no longer be held to the line of “bug-for-bug compatibility” with Red Hat, and that means that we can now accept bug fixes outside of Red Hat’s release cycle. While that means some AlmaLinux OS users may encounter bugs that are not in Red Hat, we may also accept patches for bugs that have not yet been accepted upstream, or shipped downstream. I wonder just how much consumers care about the strict 1:1 with RHEL. With this change to AlmaLinux, we’re about to find out.

Beyond the dazzling sea of licensed fireworks and thunderclouds lies a cosmic array of ancient stars. It’s within our gaze upon these stars where we find the inspiration for COSMIC DE, our new desktop environment created for Pop!_OS and other Linux distros. Let’s get into the updates! COSMIC DE is System76’s in-progress Rust-based desktop environment. System76 has done some neat tricks while resizing windows in tiled mode, they’re splitting up the notifications subsystems into separate threads, they added fractional scaling, and more.

A few weeks ago we reported that the European Union wanted to force device makers to make batteries user-replaceable, and today it’s been confirmed and made official. The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their products to this requirement. This is an important provision for consumers. Light means of transport batteries will need to be replaceable by an independent professional. Excellent.

Are you an Android developer with applications on the Play Store? Well, you might want to know that Google is about to publish your phone number on the Play Store for everyone to see. We’re renaming the “Contact details” section on your app’s store listing to “App support” and adding a new “About the developer” section to help users learn more about you. This may show verified identity information like name, address, and contact details. Google is doing this in an attempt to “build user trust”, but to me it seems rife for abuse. Does this really mean every small indie developer is going to have their personal phone number published for all to see? I also wonder what’s going to be displayed under Google’s own applications – it’s notoriously difficult to get anyone at Google on the phone, so will they be excluded from this new policy? Will they be allowed to link to a recording?

The general trend of macOS releases over the past few years is that it has been moving closer and closer to the look and feel of iOS. The icons have become iOS icons, and their shape has become the iOS shape, and you can now use your iPhone as the Mac’s webcam, etc. etc. This occasionally comes at the expense of other functionality (ask me how I feel about the new Settings menu), but it is the direction that Apple has clearly been heading in since (arguably) Big Sur. Every so often, other splashy features are announced (Stage Manager, Universal Control, Quick Notes) that I write a lot about and then never end up using ever again. So, good news for Continuity fans: that’s basically what’s going on with Sonoma. Ventura looked a heck of a lot like iOS, and Sonoma looks even more like iOS. I turned my office’s Mac Studio on after installing the developer beta and thought, for a second, that I might be hallucinating my iPhone’s lockscreen. It’s remarkably reminiscent. It’s crazy how Microsoft always seems to be doing things about 10 years before everyone else catches on, for better or worse. I’m not a fan of the iOS look, and it looks whacky and childish to me when ported to the Mac – especially since macOS has also become almost Windows-like by having so many application frameworks, some from iOS, some from macOS, and some a weird combination of the two. It’s making macOS far messier and more inconsistent than it used to be, leaving the Linux desktop as the last bastion of people who value a dekstop-first, consistent interface. If you told me this 10-15 years ago, I’d have called you crazy, but we’re now living in a world where a GTK or QT desktop is far more consistent and focused on the desktop than Windows and macOS, which both feel lost in the woods at the moment.

Apple is officially releasing the first public betas of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14 Sonoma today, a little over a month after releasing the first developer betas at its Worldwide Developers Conference. I have to say, Apple is doing a great job with their public beta access. It’s easy enough that it’s accessible, but not so easy you’ve got millions of people running unstable software. Considering the number of platforms they have to support – that’s no easy feat.

On behalf of the Thunderbird team, Thunderbird Council, our global community of contributors, and our extended Mozilla family, I am incredibly excited to announce the initial launch of Thunderbird 115 “Supernova” for Linux, macOS, and Windows! With this year’s version, we’re delivering much more than just another yearly release. Supernova represents a modernized overhaul of the software – both visually and technically – while retaining the familiarity and flexibility you expect from Thunderbird. This is a massive release, and modernises this venerable e-mail client considerably. I can’t wait to test it out once it hits the Fedora repositories – I never liked Thunderbird all that much, but Supernova seems like something that suits me a little better, so I’m curious to see if it can pull me away from Geary. If you want to quickly gauge the changes to the user interface, the Thunderbird team made a very handy page for that.

You could put it this way – DisplayPort has all the capabilities of interfaces like HDMI, but implemented in a better way, without legacy cruft, and with a number of features that take advantage of the DisplayPort’s sturdier architecture. As a result of this, DisplayPort isn’t just in external monitors, but also laptop internal displays, USB-C port display support, docking stations, and Thunderbolt of all flavors. If you own a display-capable docking station for your laptop, be it classic style multi-pin dock or USB-C, DisplayPort is highly likely to be involved, and even your smartphone might just support DisplayPort over USB-C these days. Back when I bought my current 144Hz 1440p monitor with G-Sync for my gaming PC, DisplayPort was the only way to hook it all up, since HDMI wasn’t yet supported. Ever since, out of a baseless sense of caution, I’ve always preferred DisplayPort for all my PC video connection needs, and as it turns out – yes, DisplayPort is definitely better than HDMI, and this article will tell you why.

The Kelly Rowland/Nelly song Dilemma features an infamous scene amongst nerds where Kelly Rowland tries to send a message to Nelly using a Nokia 9210 Communicator. Unfortunately, she does this using the built in spreadsheet program and receives no reply. People suggested she might be using the =HYPERLINK() function in Excel, but would that even work?

Some huge news today. Intel has started to notify its ecosystem saying that it will stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business. For the handful of STH readers who are unaware, Intel not only makes chips but they also make systems. Earlier this year, we covered that Intel was exiting the server business and selling it to MiTAC. Now its line of PCs is being sunset as well. Luckily, the market for small, powerful computers is more alive than it’s ever been, and there are countless OEMs making both AMD and Intel tiny computers these days. My only concern would be that Intel exiting this market might mean the kinds of parts needed for tiny computers like the NUC also become harder to source, but since you can always use laptop parts, I doubt that’s going to be an issue.

Liam Dawe at GamingOnLinux: Well, the results are here. In the USA the FTC was trying to block Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard but Microsoft has won the fight. Now Microsoft are one big step closer to actually properly closing the deal, and a rather big consolidation of the gaming industry given how big Activision Blizzard are. I haven’t been keeping up with this case very much, but if history’s anything to go by, any form of consolidation at this scale tends to work out worse for consumers and the market.