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Monthly Archive:: July 2023

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.