I've been thinking about how cool it would be if we could categorize internet domains in the same way the Dewey Decimal System categorizes books. Such a system would allow independent search engines and directories to compete with Google again.

We live in a time where you can spin up as many VPSs as you need. Where data can be distributed in all sorts of ways, among those machines. And on the cusp of the fastest processing power in history (quantum).

I'm honestly looking for a discussion on extending this:

https://github.com/ki4jgt/Open-Catalog-System/blob/main/OCS.json

It's a taxonomy for classifying and grouping domains of similar topics and interests (Facebook, Google, programming, YouTube, etc). As I cannot possibly think of all the subjects contained on the web, I would love some open discussion, here on Reddit -- if that's OK, on how you guys think this should be structured, what subjects you think are missing, and your general feedback on what would make it better.

For those of you who don't know, taxonomies are how we used to find information before Google. To find an atlas at your local library, you'd go to the Information desk, then the reference area (things you can look at in the library but can't check out), then the particular reference type you were looking for.

So, INF.REF.DIC would give you a bunch of dictionaries. Since you're looking for information (a definition), and need a reference, I thought it only fitting to keep the convention. In web terms, Webster, Cambridge, and Urban Dictionary would be listed here.

RFCs are listed under INF.COM.RFC because RFCs extend beyond programming, and are used in a wide range of communication and data formats.

The OCLC owns the Dewey Decimal System (WorldCat), and is lawsuit happy. They even sued someone for using the DDS in a themed party.

That demands an open system be created to take its place, lest we face the wrath of IP lawyers. Libraries aren't even allowed to use the DDS without paying a licensing fee first.

Their reach isn't limited to the US either. They have bodies all over the world, on every continent. And collect usage fees from all local libraries using WorldCat.

I've setup the issue tracker to allow you guys to suggest new categories, suggest moving categories into more appropriate locations, and to suggest name changes.

I will willingly put in the work, if you guys make some awesome cases in the issue tracker.

Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I built HealthCoach, an open-source, local-first health and wellness companion designed to track weight, blood pressure, calorie budgets, and daily nutrition journals across desktop and mobile devices.

Most commercial wellness apps rely on mandatory account registrations, cloud lock-in, aggressive telemetry, and recurring subscriptions. HealthCoach takes the opposite path:

• Local-First & Private: All data resides locally on your hardware. There is zero telemetry, tracking, or remote advertising.
• Native Desktop & Mobile Support: Full native desktop builds for Linux and Windows, alongside an Android mobile client.
• Offline Local Sync: Synchronize to a local file share, or peer-to-peer over local Wi-Fi without intermediate third-party servers (with optional Google Drive backup if preferred).
• Open Source: Licensed under GPL. Codebase, architecture notes, and builds are fully open:
  • Website: https://bigtlb.github.io/healthcoach/
  • GitHub: https://github.com/bigtlb/healthcoach

Google Play Closed Testing:
I'm currently working through Google Play's 14-day closed testing hurdle to make the Android build publicly available on the Play Store. If you run Linux/Windows and would like to test the Android companion app, I'd greatly appreciate your help:

1. Join the testing group: https://groups.google.com/g/healthcoach-testers
2. Web Opt-in: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.lbthomas.healthcoach
3. Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lbthomas.healthcoach

Direct desktop releases and APKs are also available directly on GitHub. Feedback, bug reports, and PRs are welcome on our issue tracker!

After some experiences at a cannabis club, and some other types of member’s clubs, I figured there may be a need for a suite like this to manage dues, snackbar tabs, etc.

https://codeberg.org/CannaClub/CannaDocs/src/tag/26.10.02/README.md

This release is mostly feature complete, and the older tag should still be usable if you prefer that, instead. This tag has shared components broken out, and a suite of end to end tests built.

Features planned: equipment library (bongs, vaporizer, dab rigs, etc), and currently getting served any products by the budtender only adds it to the tab. I’ll be planning on breaking that out into its own “tab” system to aid member work hours or such.

New feature requests welcomed. A demo site is live at cannaclub.dev if you want to check it out (Currently running 26.10.01, will be upgraded to new release soon). Bug reports also welcomed as are PRs.

Enjoy, and stay elevated!

LibreOffice continues to enjoy strong demand following the release of version 26.8 in August. According to new figures from The Document Foundation, the open-source office suite recorded 9.4 million downloads over eight weeks, from August 24 to October 18, averaging more than one million downloads per week.

Even more impressive, LibreOffice’s total downloads for 2026 have already surpassed the entire 2025 figure, with ten weeks still remaining in the year.

The latest numbers follow the record-breaking first week of LibreOffice 26.8, which saw 1,031,162 downloads shortly after release. Before the announcement, weekly downloads were slightly below one million but have remained above since.

And those 9.4 million downloads don’t tell the whole story. TDF explains that Windows updates are counted separately, as are downloads of older LibreOffice versions, which also continue to attract considerable interest.

To provide a broader picture, the foundation shared website traffic statistics for the same period. The main download website recorded 11.4 million visits, the Windows update website received about 90 million visits, and the site serving older LibreOffice releases registered nearly 39.7 million visits.

Of course, these figures represent website visits rather than actual downloads or installations, so they shouldn’t be added to the reported 9.4 million total.

As for what’s driving the growth, TDF acknowledges that it cannot provide a definitive answer. Since LibreOffice downloads are anonymous, the organization has no reliable way to determine exactly why more people are choosing the software.

“We like to think that the consistency of the LibreOffice project – which has been championing the concept of digital sovereignty and standard document formats for years – and the robustness of the software, which has never sought to be a clone of the most widely used office suite on the market but has always strived to forge its own path, are two very important factors that, in the long term, represent a significant advantage over all other products.”

Whatever the reasons, the numbers are impressive. This suggests interest in LibreOffice remains strong well after the initial excitement around version 26.8. And with more than two months left in 2026, the project is on track to finish the year with substantially more downloads than in 2025.

I saw a blog asking Mojeek's devs if it is open-source, and the devs said no. But the things is, that blog is outdated from 2022. And sustysubs.net says that it's open-source, bit I couldn't find any other modern evidence. If it's still not open-source, tell me an altermative (Not Marginalia or YaCy as I plan to use those alongside a third search engine) that's NOT reliant on proprietary indexes, the reason I even considered Mojeek

Sources I used:

• Blog post: https://community.mojeek.com/t/is-mojeek-open-source/237
• Sustysubs.net: https://www.sustysubs.net/categories/web-search/

A bit of a surprise, really, Wine is making its way to OpenBSD. An experimental port has been submitted, and early testing shows it can already run dozens of 64-bit Windows apps (including quite a few games).

The announcement comes from OpenBSD developer Thomas Frohwein, who made the proposed port public on the OpenBSD mailing list and describes it as possibly the most surprising port proposal of the year.

As Frohwein makes clear, getting Wine to work on OpenBSD has been a team effort with the bulk of the work being done by Andrii and Fabien. The biggest hurdle has been the %gs segment register. Wine needs this, but OpenBSD doesn’t allow applications to set GSBASE directly.

The breakthrough was a software workaround which uses the %gs prefix to generate the instructions, circumventing a major compatibility issue which had previously made getting Wine onto the OS so difficult.

The results are already very impressive. The dev team has successfully tested a good number of 64-bit Windows apps, and most run quite nicely. Even more surprisingly, a recent remaster of The Witcher 3 appears to run quite well (though again you do need to install vkd3d-proton to get the D3D12 via Vulkan to work).

Frohwein also posted links to screenshots and gameplay recordings to show off the progress. He pointed out that the gameplay in the recordings may look a bit less smooth than it actually is, as they were recorded directly from the system using FFmpeg.

Of course, there are still limitations. The biggest one is that WoW64 (Wine’s compatibility layer for running 32-bit Windows apps in a 64-bit environment) doesn’t currently work. The OpenBSD port is therefore limited to 64-bit Windows software.

The built-in Wine test suite is also disabled for now. Some of the tests need access to the X server, and some just hang (though the developers have not seen this in their own real-world testing with a large number of games).

For anyone wanting to play around with the port, Frohwein recommends starting with the 64-bit version of Notepad++ (a fairly light Windows app). He also suggests running Wine under a separate unprivileged user account until additional security restrictions can be implemented.

Importantly, Wine has not yet been officially accepted into the OpenBSD ports collection. The current submission is a work in progress which is being proposed for testing, feedback and review by the OpenBSD developers.

Still, given OpenBSD’s very strict security model and the technical difficulties of the task, getting Wine to run modern Windows apps and indeed some of the more demanding games is a significant accomplishment. If it does eventually make it into the official collection, it would go some way toward extending the range of software available to OpenBSD users.

For more details, see Frohwein’s announcement.

The LiberNT project is working on an alternative implementation of the Windows NT architecture, using Windows 11 version 24H2 as its compatibility reference. Unlike Linux distributions, LiberNT does not use the Linux kernel. It builds on the ReactOS codebase while replacing and extending several core components.

One of the project’s main priorities is ARM64 support, particularly for single-board computers and embedded devices. LiberNT also supports x86-64 and 32-bit x86, while RISC-V 64-bit and PowerPC ports are under development.

According to the developers, the implementation follows a clean-room approach. Windows behavior is studied using Microsoft’s public documentation, SDK and WDK headers, public symbols, and black-box testing. The team states no proprietary Windows code is copied or transcribed.

On the technical side, one of the biggest changes is NVS, a new memory manager and kernel pool implementation replacing the corresponding ReactOS components. LiberNT also introduces a new cache manager, with developers claiming better results than the original ReactOS memory manager in their memory and cache benchmarks.

Other changes include a new NTFS driver, an updated StorPort implementation with NVMe support, USB xHCI and SD bus drivers, and work on the Windows Display Driver Model and Desktop Window Manager.

On the application compatibility side, LiberNT implements WoW64 on its 64-bit targets, while ARM64 systems use the FEX emulator to run x86 applications. ARM64EC support is also part of the project.

Early compatibility results are already available on the project’s compatibility page. According to tests published by the developers, Google Chrome, the open-source strategy game 0 A.D., and Command & Conquer: Yuri’s Revenge are reported to work. Steam is listed as usable, while the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator currently starts but has not been classified as usable.

However, the compatibility database contains only five entries, all tested against a specific development build.

LiberNT also targets Raspberry Pi hardware, with the same ARM64 disk image designed to boot on Raspberry Pi 3, Raspberry Pi 5, and generic ARM64 virtual machines running under QEMU. The project includes drivers for Raspberry Pi display, networking, and audio hardware.

For those interested in trying it, the developers provide downloadable builds in three formats: a preinstalled raw disk image, a VHD image for virtualization platforms, and a bootable installation ISO. The preinstalled image is recommended, with support for both UEFI and BIOS booting.

Still, LiberNT remains a work in progress. The developers caution that the available builds are experimental and should be used in virtual machines or on spare hardware rather than production systems. The source code is available on GitHub.

The PHP development team has released emergency security updates addressing two critical vulnerabilities that could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected web servers. The fixes are available in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35. Administrators are strongly urged to upgrade immediately.

Both vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, carry a severity rating of 9.2 under CVSS 4.0. They affect PHP installations handling web requests, including those running PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP, and LiteSpeed.

According to the official PHP security advisory, the highest risk is associated with Apache’s mod_php configuration, where researchers have demonstrated that an unauthenticated request can trigger an attack before any application code executes.

The first vulnerability, CVE-2026-109618, involves memory corruption during out-of-memory handling. Under certain conditions, PHP can interrupt request processing while internal structures are only partially initialized, potentially causing subsequent cleanup operations to access invalid data.

The second, CVE-2026-109619, concerns stale global state. Memory belonging to a previous request can be freed while references to it remain accessible, allowing a later request handled by the same worker process to interact with invalid memory.

Importantly, exploiting these vulnerabilities does not require a vulnerable PHP application or a publicly accessible file-upload feature. The problems originate in PHP’s internal request processing, making them particularly concerning for administrators hosting otherwise properly maintained applications.

Debian has moved quickly to address the vulnerabilities. The project issued DSA-6574-1, confirming that Debian 13 “Trixie” users can upgrade to PHP 8.4.27-1deb13u1. Debian 12 “Bookworm” has received PHP 8.2.35-1deb12u1 in its security repository, with both fixes explicitly listed in the package changelog.

The severity has also prompted an official warning from Arch Linux, which urges administrators running publicly accessible PHP applications to immediately upgrade to php 8.5.12 or php-legacy 8.3.36, depending on the installed package.

AlmaLinux technical steering committee has also approved releasing these fixes ahead of Red Hat and CentOS Stream. Patched packages are expected to reach testing repositories later today, followed by production repositories once testing is complete.

For other Linux distros, administrators should check their repositories for updated PHP packages. Distribution maintainers and long-term support vendors received the patches in advance to prepare security updates, including backported fixes where applicable.

PHP 8.1 and older versions are no longer supported by the upstream project, although some distributions may continue providing security patches. PHP 8.2, meanwhile, is approaching its end of life on December 31, 2026.

The PHP team also emphasizes that there are no complete workarounds for these vulnerabilities. Disabling session.upload_progress.enabled and restricting request sizes may reduce exposure to some attack paths, but these measures do not address every exploitation scenario.

Administrators should install the appropriate security update as soon as possible, and restart affected PHP workers or services to ensure the corrected code runs.

I'm looking for a script that uses arp poisoning to impersonate the network DNS server and blocks all requests to ad servers.

Connect the device to any network and you've automatically got ad blockers for all devices without configuring anything.

Hacking for good.

Pipepipe doesn't play soundcloud songs for me since a couple of days and it is marked as legacy anyway. Firefox doesn't play songs, and vanadoum also has issues sometimes.

What do you use or recommend to listen to sets on soundcloud?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53413788

License: MIT

I couldn't find any app in the stores that tracked allergy levels based on location, even an approximate one, so I built my own.

It shows 15 types of pollen for wherever you are in Italy. Forecasts come from Open-Meteo (CAMS) and real measurements from ISPRA, and next to each value the app tells you which of the two it is, or if it's just an estimate.

There's a symptom diary that takes a few seconds a day. After a while it shows which pollens match your worst days, and you can export it as a PDF for your allergist. It also has alerts and a home screen widget.

No account, no ads, no trackers, and it doesn't need Google Play Services.

The app is only in Italian for now, since the data only covers Italy.

APK: https://github.com/lorenzocaputodev/allergy_radar/releases/latest
Source: https://github.com/lorenzocaputodev/allergy_radar

Every system listed below is open source and not powered by Linux. Each has an ISO or installer you can boot today, and many of the picks can even run Linux applications.

Think of it as a list of operating systems that are friends with Tux but not friendly enough to call him inside for a cup of tea.

This list is not ranked.

Vinix

If you own an Apple Silicon MacBook and want a system that is neither macOS nor a Linux distribution, Vinix is aimed at you. Only the original M1 is supported today, and Alexander Medvednikov, the author of V, maintains the project.

The kernel is monolithic and written mostly in V, while part of it is C and assembly. Because memory is managed by hand, no garbage collector can interrupt a system call, and the security model borrows certain concepts from OpenBSD.

On ARM64, it runs Alpine Linux binaries natively, and pkg installs packages from Alpine's aarch64 repositories. ISOs for both x86-64 and ARM64 are available for virtual machine use.

A good pick if you enjoy poking at experimental kernels.

Asterina NixOS

Trying Asterinas NixOS means setting up a NixOS system and finding a Rust kernel where Linux should be. Asterinas is that kernel, and because it implements Linux's system call interface, apps for the Linux platform run on it.

The distribution is configured through Nix like regular NixOS, and unsafe Rust is allowed only inside a small framework called OSTD, while the rest of the kernel, along with its drivers, is safe Rust.

x86_64 is the fully supported platform, and ARM64 and RISC-V sit one tier below it. The project says the distro is not ready for production use and aims the installer ISO on GitHub at early adopters and enthusiasts.

A good pick if you follow the implementation of Rust in operating systems.

Redox OS

Where Asterinas swaps Rust in under NixOS, Redox OS builds the whole system from scratch in Rust. It’s a Unix-like OS with a microkernel design, and Jeremy Soller of System76 created and maintains it.

You get the Orbital desktop, a pkg package manager, and several apps from System76’s COSMIC desktop. Linux and BSD software has gotten much easier to port too, and the project has recently been focusing on making Redox boot reliably on real hardware, not just in a virtual machine.

A good pick if you want to see how far a pure Rust operating system has come

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a complete operating system derived from BSD, the Unix version developed at the University of California, Berkeley. A large community maintains it, and its license lets companies keep their own changes private.

ZFS, jails, and a hypervisor sit at the center of what it offers. OpenZFS is built into the base system, and boot environments let you roll back a bad update by snapshotting the system first.

Its recent release, FreeBSD 15.1, came out earlier this year, and the OS runs on hardware platforms like AMD64, AArch64, Armv7, PowerPC, and RISC-V.

A good pick if you run servers, storage, or networking gear.

GhostBSD

GhostBSD is FreeBSD with the desktop work already done. The project pairs a FreeBSD base with the MATE desktop and offers a set of applications that make users feel familiar with using it.

The name started as shorthand for GNOME hosted by FreeBSD. MATE, the desktop it ships today, is a continuation of GNOME 2, and the old name still fits.

Updates arrive on a slow-rolling schedule, and the project says it values a stable cycle over chasing the newest software the way some Linux distros do. The current release, 26.1-R15.0p2, came out in April on a FreeBSD 15.0 base.

Also good to know is that Linux binary compatibility comes preconfigured, and an installer built on OpenZFS keeps setup approachable for newcomers.

A good pick if you want FreeBSD as an everyday desktop.

Haiku

Haiku is an open source operating system inspired by BeOS that is aimed at personal computing. The same team writes the kernel and the desktop applications, with the project crediting that approach for the system's consistent interface.

Under that interface sits a kernel built for responsiveness, a system that is multithreaded throughout, and a BFS file system whose indexed metadata lets Tracker, the file manager, run database-style queries across a drive.

Software installs are handled via packages that mount into the system, and earlier states are kept for rolling back botched updates.

A good pick if you are looking for a uniform desktop experience.

ReactOS

ReactOS comes with a warning label attached because the OS is still considered alpha-level software, and the download page promises nothing about stability, the safety of your files, or whether it would work on your hardware.

Behind the warning is a full operating system with a Windows-style desktop that the project says was written from scratch, while most of its user-mode code is based on Wine, the ubiquitous compatibility layer.

By default, it installs only onto a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, and Btrfs support is experimental.

A good pick if you want to see how far an open source Windows reimplementation can go.

FreeDOS

If you have old DOS games, legacy business software, or a BIOS flashing tool that won’t run anywhere else, FreeDOS is the one to grab. It’s a complete MS-DOS compatible operating system, started by Jim Hall in 1994 and still maintained today.

It runs on everything from an original 8086 to a modern PC, though newer machines need legacy BIOS mode or UEFI with legacy boot turned on. The requirements are tiny too: 640 KB of RAM and about 20 MB of disk space for a basic install.

You get a Live CD, a USB installer for real hardware, a Legacy CD, and even a floppy edition. I’d start with the Live CD in a virtual machine, which is also what the project recommends for most people.

A good pick if you want to run DOS games and legacy software on real hardware.

KolibriOS

KolibriOS is an operating system small enough to fit on a floppy disk. Which sounds weird because no modern computer comes with floppy disk anymore. Even CD drive are rare these days.

But then, the KolibriOS is not meant for modern computers anyway. You need just an i586 processor, 12 MB of RAM, and a few megabytes of disk space. It doesn’t follow POSIX either, so don’t expect to port your Unix tools over.

The kernel and drivers are written entirely in FASM assembly, which is why it boots to a GUI in seconds and opens apps almost instantly.

Despite its tiny size, you get a text editor, an image viewer, a graphics editor, a web browser, and over 30 games. It fully supports FAT12/16/32 and can read NTFS, exFAT, and ext2/3/4 partitions.

The project is still very active, so worth considering it in your retro tool kit.

A good pick if you are into retro computing or if you want to keep the 90s computer alive.

A suggestion

Try these operating systems in a virtual machine before switching. I say that because it’s a good habit to test out such non-standard pieces of kit before committing to them on your hardware.

First see what works for you. Then see if your workflow and usage habits align with what the OS offers. Once you settle on one, keep it updated so you never miss critical patches.

Air-gapped setups are better protected from such risks, of course.

We've been getting a lot of AI coded submissions recently, as well as lots of reports asking to remove them.

Should we remove these posts, or not?

Arriving six months after version 7.9, OpenBSD 8.0 is now available, marking the 61st release of the security-focused Unix-like operating system.

One of the biggest changes concerns OpenBSD’s built-in VMM/VMD virtualization system, which now supports up to 64 virtual CPUs per guest. It also introduces x2APIC support, MSI/MSI-X interrupts for virtio devices, checksum offloading, and improved handling of QCOW disk images.

Several fixes improve compatibility with 32-bit Linux guests, while changes to virtual machine ownership management and interrupt emulation make the virtualization infrastructure more capable.

Graphics support has also been upgraded, with DRM drivers updated to those from Linux kernel 6.18.53. Notably, OpenBSD 8.0 adds support for Intel Arc A-Series (Alchemist) graphics cards through the inteldrm driver.

Another important change increases the amd64 kernel’s virtual address space from 4 GB to 512 GB, allowing the system to map over 4 GB of video memory. The release also addresses GPU timeout issues affecting some Intel Alder Lake systems.

On the hardware front, ARM64 systems now support hibernation, and several fixes improve suspend and resume functionality on Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered laptops. RISC-V support has also expanded with kernel support for the V vector extension, Advanced Interrupt Architecture, and the Sstc timer extension.

Wireless networking receives many improvements, particularly in the qwx and qwz drivers. Both now support 802.11n with 40 MHz channels. Additional fixes address crashes, firmware communication, roaming reliability, and power management.

Networking improvements extend to Ethernet hardware, including support for Intel Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake devices and Intel E610 controllers.

For security, OpenBSD 8.0 adds checks and fixes across the kernel and system utilities, including improvements to pledge and unveil, tighter validation of executable files, and protections against memory corruption and information disclosure.

The PF firewall also receives several fixes addressing TCP connection tracking, packet handling, race conditions, and potential out-of-bounds memory access. The built-in HTTP server also gains support for custom HTTP headers and switches its default TLS cipher configuration from “compat” to “secure.”

For network administrators, the release introduces rtrd and rtrctl, providing support for the RPKI-to-Router protocol. Additional improvements to bgpd address route validation, reconnect handling, and various routing-related issues.

On the cryptography side, OpenBSD 8.0 ships with LibreSSL 4.4, which makes the hybrid post-quantum X25519MLKEM768 key exchange the preferred TLS 1.3 group in libtls. The release also includes numerous improvements to certificate validation, TLS handling, and cryptographic implementations.

OpenSSH has been updated to version 10.6, bringing experimental support for composite post-quantum ML-DSA44/Ed25519 signatures, additional authentication options, and multiple security fixes. These include disabling the LZ77 dictionary coder to prevent a potential side-channel leak.

Package management has also improved, with the pkg_add utility now handles certain dependency-processing loops more reliably, fw_update introduces stricter signature validation, and syspatch avoids unnecessary full archive downloads when checking for updates.

Finally, the ports collection provides updated desktop environments and applications, including KDE Plasma 6.7.5, GNOME 49, Xfce 4.20, Firefox 157, Chromium 154, LibreOffice 26.8, GCC 16.1, and PostgreSQL 18.6. Wayland 1.26 is also available, along with compositors such as Sway, Niri, Labwc, and Wayfire.

For more information, see the official OpenBSD 8.0 release announcement. The release is available for download from the project’s mirror network.

If you've ever used Windows 11, it's no secret that the OS prioritizes Edge over competing browsers. But Mozilla doesn't think you should settle for a lack of choice. In fact, it's accusing Windows of being full of dark patterns and harmful design techniques that force you toward Microsoft's browser.

Mozilla reps tell me they've met with Microsoft about their concerns, but that the company wasn't responsive. "They'll do the minimum the law requires to respect user choice," explains Kush Amlani, Mozilla's counsel overseeing global competition and regulatory work. Mozilla isn’t the only browser maker criticizing Microsoft, either. Vivaldi lead Jon Stephenson von Tetzsner told me he switched to Linux because Microsoft’s OS is so obnoxious. (I reached out to Microsoft for this story, but it declined to comment.)

As someone who's been using and writing about Windows for many years, I increasingly agree with the above sentiments. I'm sick of all the ways Windows 11 tries to get me to use Edge, so I can't imagine how annoyed more casual users of the OS feel.

Europe Proves Microsoft Can Be Forced to Change

Mozilla recently marked 100 days since it released an 87-page report detailing the ways in which Microsoft pushes Edge on Windows PCs. The organization says Microsoft isn't living up to the "principled approach to app pinning and browser defaults" it promised to abide by in 2023. One example is how Windows often displays a “Let’s finish setting up your PC” pop-up after an OS update. This screen has an enabled-by-default option to “use recommended browser settings,” which makes Edge the default web browser.

However, that screen doesn't appear in Europe. European laws now force Microsoft to make Windows more respectful of user choices.

For instance, in European countries, the Start menu opens links in your default web browser rather than in Edge, as it does everywhere else. Amlani says Mozilla wants Microsoft to release the European version of Windows to the rest of the world. However, he thinks this will require government action. As he puts it, "Microsoft can do better when it's forced."

Beyond government action, Mozilla wants to see the public pressure Microsoft to change its tactics, pointing out that recent changes specifically address user feedback. The company is no doubt aware that many other Windows users dislike the way Windows promotes the Edge browser, but the dissatisfaction clearly hasn't been loud enough.

Mozilla argues that Microsoft's tactics are actively hurting its users. "A lot of ordinary people don't necessarily notice that their browser has been switched," claims Amlani. He says the company hears from Firefox users who are confused about why their bookmarks have vanished after Windows changed their default browser to Edge, for example.

Microsoft Isn't the Only One Trapping You in an Ecosystem

Microsoft isn’t uniquely hostile to user choice. For instance, Apple’s iOS doesn’t let you install true third-party browsers in most of the world; competing apps all still use Safari under the hood. Users, again, have more choice in Europe, where laws force Apple to allow fully alternative browsers. Google’s ChromeOS and Googlebook OS also rely heavily on Chrome. In other words, both Apple and Google go far beyond what Microsoft is doing on Windows to favor their own browsers.

Mozilla acknowledges that it has concerns about large tech companies beyond Microsoft. "They want to steer you to their own search engines, their own applications, and then create this closed ecosystem,” says Mozilla's Ajit Varma, head of Firefox.

Even I'm Exhausted by Edge's Encroachments

Windows 11's constant attempts to make me use Edge are beyond frustrating because I genuinely want to like the OS. I’ve previously written about wanting Microsoft to roll out Windows 11's user-friendly European customizations everywhere, and I fully stand by that. Microsoft has moderated Edge's presence in a few other ways, but these efforts don't go nearly far enough.

It's a shame that something as basic as choosing a default browser is at odds with most tech companies' desires to dictate the software you use. These organizations will always prioritize profits, and pushing their products is one way to ensure that. With Windows as the desktop OS market share leader, Microsoft is potentially under more pressure to appear neutral than Apple and Google, but none of these companies should have such anti-consumer policies.

Mozilla Has Motives, Too—But It's Still Right

Of course, Mozilla has a financial interest in competing with Edge on Windows. Recent annual reports show the Mozilla Foundation earns more than $600 million per year in revenue, most of which comes from Google paying to be the default search engine in Firefox. Although Mozilla is attempting to diversify its revenue with products like the Firefox VPN, the company’s income largely depends on its contracts with Google. These agreements are confidential, but I'd bet that Mozilla can likely negotiate higher payments from Google if Firefox has more active users.

I understand that both Mozilla and Microsoft are large organizations pursuing their business incentives, but I still side with the former here. If the only way Microsoft can get people to use Edge is by forcing or tricking them, it really needs to build a better browser that more people prefer. I've gotten good enough at thwarting these shenanigans, but no one should have to fight their OS this hard on something as simple as a browser preference.

Intel has long worked on tuning their oneDNN neural network library for their hardware and saw its adoption by PyTorch and other AI frameworks. AMD has maintained ZenDNN as their downstream fork that is oneDNN API compatible while catering to their Zen processor designs. As an interesting twist, AMD and Intel jointly announced today they will be collaborating around oneDNN for PyTorch and pushing the AMD Zen improvements into oneDNN.

The competing companies announced they will be working to combine their x86 CPU optimization work for PyTorch into oneDNN. This follows their work together on the ISA side with the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group.

The two companies will focus on oneDNN as the default open-source library for x86 acceleration in PyTorch. AMD ZenDNN optimizations will go into oneDNN. Additionally, AMD will join the UXL Foundation as a steering member.

The UXL Foundation was formed in 2023 with many of the former oneAPI software projects going under the consortium backed by Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Arm, and other vendors. AMD is now joining that party in contributing to oneDNN.

Very interesting development and it wasn't on my bingo card this year seeing AMD contribute to oneDNN. More details via the AMD Newsroom.

Been using a degoogled LineageOS phone with all apps being exclusively FLOSS. My favourite free alternatives to proprietary apps and services must be Lemmy (Jerboa) for Reddit, ArcaneChat and Matrix (Extera) for Telegram, Fluxer for Discord.

Which ones are your favourite?

There's an app being presented in a small store with Linux apps, without any licensing information or link to its source code. The package archive contains mostly scripted code, one compiled executable, and this license:

Copyright (c) 2026 .... All rights reserved.

Proprietary software.

Third-party components and assets retain their respective licenses and notices.

There is no additional licenses at all in the whole package, not even in the SVGs that the dev most definitely did not create from scratch.

The app probably pulls in these third party components during runtime, or provides them inside the archive. Short of analyzing every single file in the package I have no idea.

Most of these third party components seem to be pulled from the developers own website (murky), one or two are not, and those are most definitely open-source-licensed, probably GPL.

I raised an issue about transparency requirements in the app store. Not about this one developer - yet.

Most contributors do provide source code and a GPL or similar license, but the app store's policy phrases this as a nice thing, not a must. But there's always been a strong faction that does not care about such things at all. And there's a rising tide of new, mostly LLM-assisted apps that have no concept of transparency, or qualms about stealing code - be it through the LLM or directly.

All in all this is one of those projects that mix FOSS-licensed Linux stuff with proprietary-licensed and closed source stuff in a very unfortunate way.

Is there any sort of legal situation here?

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Apart from that - what else would you say about murky ethics here? What arguments can I use to make my point? There's many similar packages up on that store.

Many people suspect that this developer is lying when they say they're not using LLMs for development. Any way to disprove that claim based on the package archive?

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While writing this I analyzed the software package in question a bit more and I'm pretty sure I know the answer already, but I'm still asking the question. Maybe I missed something, or maybe there is a legal issue I'm not aware of...

The ReactOS open-source operating system has seen its NTFS file-system driver mature to the point that it can be finally used for installing and using ReactOS with it. NTFS formatting support is also finally now possible with this driver too.

Hitting this major milestone of its NTFS driver maturing to the point of installing and using the ReactOS operating system itself with it also puts the project one step closer to its elusive beta release.

ReactOS posted to X today this big goal being realized of the NTFS driver being much more mature for handling ReactOS installations.

It is important to note though that the ReactOS NTFS driver still lacks caching leading to slower performance than other NTFS drivers/platforms, journaling, and security support are also not yet implemented. There is also the possibility of other undiscovered bugs they note.

A nice milestone for ReactOS and the latest in a variety of nice achievements they have made so far in 2026.

I'm the author. Boxing turns the new tab into a canvas: big boxes hold small boxes, small boxes hold bookmarks, and you can drag, connect and zoom.

The part that might interest people here: every design call is written up as an ADR in the repo, including the ones I reversed. A free hue slider got replaced by 5 hand-tuned themes because it allowed ugly combos (ADR-0012). The font sizes all derive from one base value with an 11px floor (ADR-0019). WebDAV sync went from last-write-wins to a per-box three-way merge with a snapshot before anything gets overwritten (ADR-0009). There's also a contrast check in CI that fails the build if a clickable control relies on a too-faint border.

No analytics, no tracking. Data lives in browser storage; WebDAV or Gist backup is opt-in. Plain JS, Manifest V3, 14 languages, on the Firefox and Edge add-on stores.

https://github.com/Xxx91n/boxing

Happy to hear where the design or the code is wrong. Translation fixes are very welcome too.

Hi everyone

I've been experiencing quite serious hearing loss. I've just started a new job and I can't hear what people are saying to me.

Is there such an app? That can send a live audio feed from my phone to my headphones?