Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC

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.

Microsoft wins against FTC to buy Activision Blizzard

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.

Desktop Linux breaks 7% marketshare

It’s been all over the news, so I can’t get around posting about it here: the year of the Linux desktop is finally here. According to the – admittedly, troublesome – figures from StatCounter, the market share of Linux on the desktop has reached 7.23%. Other publications do not count Chrome OS installations as part of the Linux share, but I think that’s nonsense – they’re both clearly Linux desktop operating systems, and should be added up. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, and I’ve mostly stopped reporting on market share figures ages ago, as all they do is invite pointless flamewars and vitriol. Linux on the desktop is doing just fine, and received a major boost thanks to Valve’s Proton. We all have our desktop platform of choice, and each of those choices is valid. Still, more than 7% on the desktop and like 90%+ on mobile is not bad for a project developed by a community.

European Commission blesses new user data transfer agreement between EU and US

Today, the European Commission adopted its adequacy decision for the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The decision concludes that the United States ensures an adequate level of protection – comparable to that of the European Union – for personal data transferred from the EU to US companies under the new framework. On the basis of the new adequacy decision, personal data can flow safely from the EU to US companies participating in the Framework, without having to put in place additional data protection safeguards. In 2020, European Union courts struck down the previous agreement between the EU and the US, the Privacy Shield, as the court stated it did not sufficiently protect EU user data from US government surveillance. This was obviously a big problem for companies like Facebook and Google, and ever since, the two blocks have been trying to come up with a replacement that would allow these companies to continue to operate relatively unscathed. In the meantime, though, several European countries handed out large fines to Amazon and Facebook for not taking proper care of EU user data. So, what makes this new agreement stricter than the previous one? The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework introduces new binding safeguards to address all the concerns raised by the European Court of Justice, including limiting access to EU data by US intelligence services to what is necessary and proportionate, and establishing a Data Protection Review Court (DPRC), to which EU individuals will have access. The new framework introduces significant improvements compared to the mechanism that existed under the Privacy Shield. For example, if the DPRC finds that data was collected in violation of the new safeguards, it will be able to order the deletion of the data. The new safeguards in the area of government access to data will complement the obligations that US companies importing data from EU will have to subscribe to. I’m obviously no legal expert so take this with a grain of salt, but this kind of feels like yes, there are additional protections and safeguards, but if (let’s be real here: when) companies like Facebook violate these, don’t worry, EU citizen! You can undertake costly, complex, and long legal proceedings in misty business courts so Facebook or whatever can get fined for an amount that Zuckerberg spends on his interior decorator every week. The courts struck down the Safe Harbor agreement in 2015, and the aforementioned Privacy Shield in 2020, so we’ll see if this new agreement stands the test of the courts.

Donate to OSNews through Patreon or Ko-Fi

Running OSNews.com is not exactly something that generates loads of income, yet it’s taking up a decent amount of time and energy that I have to find somewhere between my wife and kids, translation work, and the rest of my life. While OSNews will always remain free to access, it would mean the world to me if you could support my work financially. There’s two ways to do this. First, you can become a Patreon, which will grant you access to an advertisement-free version of the website, as well as some comment flair to show off your big spender lifestyle (silver flair, gold flair, or a custom flair for the big ballers among you). Patreons donate a small fee every month. Second, you can donate a one-time amount using Ko-Fi. Here, you are free to set whatever amount you want (starting at €5), but you won’t qualify for any of the extras you get by becoming a Patreon. However, anyone who’s crazy enough to make a large-enough donation will still get these extras, of course. Support is support, after all. Thank you! Also, if you wish to help out by donating and/or selling us hardware you really want me to devote time to here on OSNews, I can make that work too. For a few items I’m especially looking for, take a look at my personal website for more information.

A new GNUstep desktop comes to Debian

So a few years ago, a Ukrainian programmer called Sergii Stoian started to build a modern Linux desktop environment based around the GNUstep components running on top of CentOS Linux, which he called NEXTSPACE. Sadly, development stalled a couple of years ago, before CentOS Linux’ premature end-of-life. We are happy to report that Stoian is alive and well, but what with his country being invaded and so on, he’s been a bit too busy to work on his project in recent years. This is where Ondrej Florian, also known as OnFlApp, comes in. Florian has put together a collection of GNUstep components, including some drawn from NEXTSPACE, to create the GNUstep Desktop Environment. For now, the project’s contains scripts to build it and install it, but only on Debian, although Debian versions 9, 10 and 11 are included. We tried on Debian 11.7 “Bullseye”, and in a VM, it works perfectly. The process is manual, but not too labour-intensive: install Git, clone the repo, then run three scripts. So, at this stage, GSDE is not very beginner friendly, but it’s a substantial improvement over manually finding, installing or compiling, and configuring the various bits of the GNUstep system which are already in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories. The end result is better integrated, more complete, and even includes a working web browser – although you’ll need to install the Chromium browser yourself, in order for the GSDE web browser to call it and work. A GNUstep-based desktop has exited in the periphery of the Linux world for decades, but it’s always been incomplete, buggy, abandoned, or simply unusable. I really hope that this time around, that might change, because it would be a welcome change from all the QT and GTK-based desktop.

Oracle responds to Red Hat source code changes

Oracle, who distributes an RHEL clone, has responded to Red Hat’s latest source code availability changes. We want to emphasize to Linux developers, Linux customers, and Linux distributors that Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstream distributions of every kind, community and commercial. We are happy to work with distributors to ease that process, work together on the content of Oracle Linux, and ensure Oracle software products are certified on your distribution. The only good thing about Red Hat’s announced changes is that it will make Oracle’s life harder. That might make it all worthwhile.

Wayland on OpenBSD

These are my notes from experimenting with building Wayland bits on OpenBSD during g2k23 in Tallinn… Thanks to the OpenBSD foundation for organizing this event. This is still far from a complete running system as there are many issues on the road, but it’s a good start and it shows that it’s definitely not impossible to get Wayland running on OpenBSD. This is one of the very few valid criticisms of Wayland: it’s designed and developed entirely for Linux, with no regard for BSD or other platforms. Now, I find this an entirely valid choice and completely understandable choice to make from the developers’ perspectives, but it’s still unpleasant that the BSD world is stuck with archaic, unmaintained X.org while the Linux world has moved on. In that light, it’s great to see that Wayland may, in fact, not be as married to Linux as we think.

New study reveals most classic video games are completely unavailable

The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered. This confirms something all of us already suspected or knew: the vast majority of classic games are simply not available in any legal way, shape, or form. If it wasn’t for the emulation and preservation scene, many of these games would face certain oblivion in the near future. It’s high time some changes are made to intellectual property law to make software and game preservation legal.

How small is the smallest .NET Hello World binary?

Here is a dumb question that you probably never asked yourself: What is the minimal amount of bytes we need to store in a .NET executable to have the CLR print the string "Hello, World!" to the standard output? In this post, we will explore the limits of the .NET module file format, get it as small as possible, while still having it function like a normal executable on a typical Windows machine with the .NET Framework installed. The answer is “way, way smaller than I thought”.

Project restores Windows Update for Windows 9x

This is a community-based project and is actively updated. This project aims at restoring the legacy Windows Update websites, and allows older operating systems (Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP) to obtain updates like they used to. Ever since 2011 when Microsoft pulled the plug on nearly all the Windows Update websites, the Windows Update feature for older Windows operating systems was no longer functional. The only way to install updates after that point was through external third-party installers which didn’t cover all the updates that the operating system would fully support. So, with this project, we can now update operating systems as old as Windows 95 all the way through Windows XP RTM like we used to back in the day. IT’s still a work-in-progress, as sourcing the various update packages and installers is proving to be quite difficult in some cases, and not all versions of Windows/Microsoft Update have been recreated yet. However, as the ever awesome Michael MJD notes in his video overview of the project, it already works quite well for Windows 95 and Windows 98 and 98SE.

Details about the plans for Wayland support for Budgie Desktop

In our State of the Budgie blog post in May of last year, we emphasized that Budgie 11 would be Wayland-first, with initial expectations being that we would support an X11 fallback mode, as well as mentioning that “it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility to have a Budgie 10 under Wayland”. Since that blog post, several key developments have occurred in the Wayland ecosystem. This detailed article about the future of Wayland support in Budgie is a great read. If you’re interested in the kinds of considerations and decisions that go into maintaining a Linux desktop environment in 2023.

FreeBSD at 30 years: its secrets to success

FreeBSD is still going strong. Its strength comes from having built a strong base in its code, documentation, and culture. It has managed to evolve with the times, continuing to bring in new committers, and smoothly transition through several leadership groups. It continues to fill an important area of support that is an alternative to Linux. Specifically, companies needing redundancy require more than one operating system, since any single operating system may fall victim to a failure that could take out the entire company’s infrastructure. For all these reasons, FreeBSD has a bright future. In short, FreeBSD is awesome! Having finally delved a bit deeper into FreeBSD this past year, I have to say it’s an incredibly nice operating system to use and maintain. In the end, it’s the lack of polish as a desktop and laptop user that prevents me from using it full-time, but the built-in tools are incredibly nice to use, software installation and updates are a breeze, and the documentation is great. It really makes me wish the desktop and laptop was more of a focus for the developers, but I understand why it isn’t.

Ubuntu 23.10’s new software app will demote DEBs

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution but it’s increasingly positioning snaps as the preferred way to ‘get’ software. The aim is, eventually, to default to a full-snap experience on the desktop. With that plan in mind you won’t be mighty surprised (and if you are, welcome back to planet earth) to hear that showcasing DEB software will not be the primary aim of this new Ubuntu Software replacement. Ubuntu’s Director of Engineering says the new hub will be a “snap-first app store” designed around snap metadata. If the same piece of software exists in the Ubuntu repository and the snap store the new store will only make it possible to install the snap version. This is not a surprising move, but one that is sure to alienate at least some – including me. Not that I’d use Ubuntu any time soon anyway, but forcing Snaps down my throat certainly isn’t going to draw me back in.

Before Xerox, there was Addressograph

Truth be told, this was the first time I heard of an Addressograph. So what does it do? What was the motivation behind its creation? And how does it work? Let’s take a dive into an Addressograph. I had never heard of this machine either – it’s designed to imprint things like names, addresses, and other information onto envelopes and forms. It’s one of the many, many innovations we’ve lost along the way in the 20th century that I’d love to see in the real world sometime.

Lumia WOA: full Windows for Lumia

This project brings the Windows 10 or Windows 11 desktop operating system to your Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. It’s the same edition of Windows you’re used to on your traditional laptop or desktop computer, but it’s the version for ARM64 (armv8a) processors. It can run ARM64, ARM, x86 and x64 applications (the last two via emulation) just fine. This is such a cool project, and is making me want to buy a 950 XL on eBay.

The complex history of the Intel i960 RISC processor

The Intel i960 was a remarkable 32-bit processor of the 1990s with a confusing set of versions. Although it is now mostly forgotten (outside the many people who used it as an embedded processor), it has a complex history. It had a shot at being Intel’s flagship processor until x86 overshadowed it. Later, it was the world’s best-selling RISC processor. One variant was a 33-bit processor with a decidedly non-RISC object-oriented instruction set; it became a military standard and was used in the F-22 fighter plane. Another version powered Intel’s short-lived Unix servers. In this blog post, I’ll take a look at the history of the i960, explain its different variants, and examine silicon dies. This chip has a lot of mythology and confusion (especially on Wikipedia), so I’ll try to clear things up. Not even Intel can overcome x86 – and I can guarantee you: neither will ARM. The truth is that x86 simply cannot die.

Wayland is pretty good, actually

Wayland is an interesting beast. X11, for all its faults, does a lot for the desktop environment. If you’re stretched for time, you could – in theory – just slap a panel onto the default X11 window manager and call it a day. The modern landscape of desktop environments built on top of X11 exists because developers have gotten really good at eschewing X11’s built-in crusty junk for their own new and shiny junk, so that things work as you’d expect them to. For the most part, this kinda works – with enough hacks, you can get things like variable refresh rate, fractional scaling, et cetera. The problem here is that X11 definitely was not built for those things. Variable refresh rate works, but only if you’re using a single monitor, and mixed refresh rate monitors in a single X session don’t work at all outside of the hardware cursor. Fractional scaling is a hack. Compositing in general is optional and is sort of just stapled onto the existing architecture. X11 does do what it needs to do, which is display windows, but it’s kinda garbo when you need it to do anything more advanced. Wayland is what happens when issues with the dominant windowing protocol have been festering for decades. It throws away everything and establishes a core set of standards that must be adhered to, along with a (very large) set of extensions that can be optionally implemented. The website https://wayland.app/ shows all the protocols worth knowing, and a lot more on top of that. It’s kinda like Vulkan, in a sense: the core has the basics, and everything else is extensions that can be queried for by clients. Wayland is such a massive improvement over X11 it absolutely boggles the mind that people try to claim otherwise. I’m glad we’re finally at a point where Wayland has clearly won, and developers are finally free to focus their efforts on the clearly superior choice, instead of wasting more time trying to hack X11 into the 21st century.