We talked about the Z80 SoftCard, Microsoft’s first hardware product, back in 2023, but thanks to Raymond Chen and Nicole Branagan, we’ve got some more insights.

The Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard was a plug-in expansion card for the Apple II that added the ability to run CP/M software. According to Wikipedia, it was Microsoft’s first hardware product and in 1980 was the single largest revenue source for the company.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

And Chen links to an article by Branagan from 2020, which goes into even more detail.

So there I was, very happy with my Apple ][_plus. But then I saw someone on the internet post, and it seems that my Apple is an overpriced box with a toy microcontroller for a CPU, while real computers use an Intel 8080, 8085 or Zilog Z80 to run something called “CP/M”… but I’ve already spent so much money on the Apple, so can I turn it into a real computer?

↫ Nicole Branagan

I have a soft spot for this particular subgenre of hardware – add-in cards that allow you to run an entirely different architecture inside your computer – and soon, I’ll be diving into a particularly capable example here on OSNews.

There’s something incredibly enticing and retrofuturistic about a well-designed TUI, or text-based user interface. There’s an endless list number of these, but two crossed my path these past few days, and I found them particularly appealing. First, we’ve got bluetui, an application for managing Bluetooth connections on Linux systems with bluez installed.

The second is resterm.

Resterm is a terminal-first client for working with HTTP, GraphQL, and gRPC services. No cloud sync, no signups, no heavy desktop app. Simple, yet feature rich, terminal client for .http/.rest files. It pairs a Vim-like-style editor with a workspace explorer, response diff, history, profiler and scripting so you can iterate on requests without leaving the keyboard.

↫ restterm GitHub page

I don’t use TUIs or the command line in general all that much, but these are two excellent examples of just how beautiful and user-friendly a good text-based user interface can really be. The command line is about a lot more than just archaic, cryptic incantations designed in the 1960s.

It seems like a number of Debian ports are going to face difficult times over the coming months. Debian developer Julian Andres Klode has sent a message to the Debian mailing lists that APT will very soon start requiring Rust.

I plan to introduce hard Rust dependencies and Rust code into APT, no earlier than May 2026. This extends at first to the Rust compiler and standard library, and the Sequoia ecosystem.

In particular, our code to parse .deb, .ar, .tar, and the HTTP signature verification code would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing.

↫ Julian Andres Klode

The problem for a lot of architectures that Debian supports, in one way or another, is that Rust and its toolchain simply aren’t available for them. As such, Julian Andres Klode states, rather directly, that these architectures have about six months to get themselves a full Rust toolchain, or sunset their Debian ports. The Debian PA-RISC (hppa) and Alpha ports, for instance, do not have a Rust toolchain port, and most likely won’t be getting one either, especially not within six months.

The reasoning for moving towards a hard Rust dependency for APT is the same as it is in every other similar case: Debian’s and APT’s developers want to be able to make use of modern tools and technologies, even if that means dead architectures get left behind. As much as I am a massive fan of retro-architectures like PA-RISC, I really don’t want otherwise modern Linux distributions to eschew modern tools and technologies just because they’re not available for an architecture that died in 2005. I own and use the last and most powerful PA-RISC workstation running HP-UX as a retro platform, so I definitely care – but I really don’t expect Debian or Fedora or whatever to waste any resources on supporting them if that means holding the distributions back for everyone else using it on actually modern platforms.

If there’s a large enough community of people around such architectures, they’ll keep the Linux train running. If not, well, that’s life.

Let’s take a look at how things are going at Microsoft, whose CEO claimed a few months ago that 30% of their code was generated by “AI”.

After installing Windows Updates released on or after October 28, 2025 (KB5067036), you might encounter an issue where closing Task Manager using the Close (X) button does not fully terminate the process. When you reopen Task Manager, the previous instance continues running in the background even though no window is visible. This results in multiple lingering instances of taskmgr.exe, consuming system resources and potentially degrading device performance. Additional instances appear as “Task Manager” in the Processes tab and as “Taskmgr.exe” in the Details tab. Although the impact is less if Task Manager is opened and closed a few times, many instances accumulated over time can cause noticeable slowdowns in other applications.

↫ The Windows Health Dashboard

Well okay then.

This is a conversion of the original V7 pwd program for use on POSIX systems (tested primarily on Linux). This is mostly of historical interest — modern systems have a library routine or system call for getting the current directory, and don’t need this.

I’ve attempted to make the minimum set of logic/functionality changes needed to make the program work, preserving the core of the original logic. I’ve made slightly more aesthetic changes, to make reading easier for a post-standardization C speaker.

↫ Cliff L. Biffle

Over on Fedi, Cliff L. Biffle provides more details as to why he undertook this project.

AMD is expanding its processor portfolio beyond the x86 architecture with its first ARM-based APU, internally known as “Sound Wave.” The chip’s existence was uncovered through customs import records, confirming several details about its design and purpose. Built with a BGA-1074 package measuring 32 mm × 27 mm, the processor fits within standard mobile SoC dimensions, making it suitable for thin and light computing platforms. It employs a 0.8 mm pitch and FF5 interface, replacing the FF3 socket previously used in Valve’s Steam handheld devices, further hinting at a new generation of compact AMD-powered hardware.

↫ Hilbert Hagedoorn at The Guru of 3D

It only makes sense for AMD to enter the market for ARM SoCs, as it’s a whole section of the processor market they’re not tapping into. Even if they don’t manage to compete with the best ARM processors out there, they can still serve the mid and lower end just fine.

After the release of Windows 95, with its brand new and incredibly influential graphical user interface, it was only a matter of time before this new taskbar, Start menu, and everything else would make its way to Microsoft’s other operating system line, Windows NT. The development of Windows 95 more or less lined up with that of Windows NT 3.5, but it wouldn’t be until Windows NT 4.0, released a little less than a year after Windows 95, that NT, too, would have the brand new user interface.

Raymond Chen has published a blog post detailing the cooperation and interplay between the Windows 95 and Windows NT teams, and, as always with Chen, it’s a joy to read.

Members of the Windows 95 user interface team met regularly with members of the Windows NT user interface team to keep them aware of what was going on and even get their input on some ideas that the Windows 95 team were considering. The Windows NT user interface team were focused on shipping Windows NT, but they appreciated being kept in the loop.

During the late phases of the development of Windows 95, the Windows NT side of the house took a more active role in bringing the Windows 95 user interface to Windows NT.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

Chen details there was a lot of code-sharing, to the point where the Windows 95 version of the GUI contained NT-specific code, and vice versa. This code-sharing was quite a lot less elegant than today with tools like git, since Microsoft’s own internal source code system called SLM (pronounced ‘slime’) did not support branches, so they had to regularly perform three-way merges manually.

It was a different time, for sure.

Anyway, it’s amazing how much of this ancient Microsoft lore could’ve been lost to time, or shrouded in mystery, if it wasn’t for someone like Raymond Chen regularly sharing the stories from Microsoft’s past.

OpenIndiana, the Illumos distribution for general use, has released its latest snapshot release, and there’s some really interesting things in there. To refresh your memory: Illumos is a fork of the final OpenSolaris release, based on Solaris 11, before Oracle closed Solaris back up. It’s been in development ever since that fateful day back in 2010, and several Illumos distributions with unique identities have sprung up around the project. OpenIndiana is one of them, and functions like a rolling release with a snapshot release every six months.

OpenIndiana 2025.10 was released today, and this snapshot’s changelog covers changes over the past six months. It comes with all the latest open source packages you would expect, like the latest or at least very recent versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and much more, but the GNOME version (44.4 from 2023) is definitely a bit outdated. There’s a ton new utilities written in Rust, and the usual bug and security fixes as well, like for crucial utilities such as OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and things like Python versions 3.14 3.13, 3.12, and 3.9.

A particularly interesting bullet point is maintenance work and improvements for Sun Ray support, and the changelog notes that these little thin clients are still popular among their users. I’m very deep into the world of Sun Rays at the moment, so reading that you can still use them through OpenIndiana is amazingly cool. There’s a Sun Ray metapackage that installs the necessary base components, allowing you to install Sun’s/Oracle’s original Sun Ray Server software on OpenIndiana. Even though MATE is the default desktop for OpenIndiana, the Sun Ray Server software does depend on a few GNOME components, so those will be pulled in.

I’ve definitely put this on my list, once I’m done with my current Sun Ray deep dive on Solaris 10.

If you’re interested in SPARC support, there’s quite a few machines that do work with the SPARC version of OpenIndiana, and recently, there’s been a lot of progress on this front. Running the SPARC version on various servers can work, but desktop use, say, on a Sun Ultra 45, is a bit more problematic due to boot issues and a lack of graphics drivers. The work is ongoing, though, and there’s been a ton of renewed interest.

Back in January 2025, the Python Software Foundation applied for a $1.5 million grant from the US government’s National Science Foundation, under the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program, to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI. After a lot of paperwork, their application was approved, but upon receiving the contractual agreement, the Python Software Foundation decided to back out. Why?

We became concerned, however, when we were presented with the terms and conditions we would be required to agree to if we accepted the grant. These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.

[…]

In the end, however, the PSF simply can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community.

↫ Loren Crary at the PSF blog

The fact that this is news at all is a deeply sad state of affairs, but it’s great to see at least some organisations in tech still have a spine. In a world where tech giants and their sleazy CEOs are falling over each other to lather the US president in bribes and tasteless gifts, it’s refreshing to see someone passing up on what would be an enormous amount of money for them. The PSF operates on a budget of $5 million a year, so $1.5 million would be a massive boon for the effort.

The efforts of the PSF regarding outreach have been incredibly successful over the years. PyCon US had 1% female speakers in 2011, 7% in 2012, 15% in 2013, 33% in both 2014 and 2015, and 40% in 2016. “DEI” efforts usually just mean the gruntwork of reaching out to members of underrepresented groups within your community, and ensuring they feel welcome, safe, and respected. Monocultures tend to be self-destructive, whether we’re talking about operating systems or people.

Having perspectives from people with different backgrounds, different life experiences, and different approaches is a massive net benefit to your organisation. Making efforts to foster such environments illegal is absolute batshit insanity, and I’m glad that unlike cowards like Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai, the Python Software Foundation has a spine and is standing up for what’s right.

I love it when I discover – usually through people smarter than I – an operating system or graphical user interface I’ve never heard of. This time, we’ve got Bellcore MGR, as meticulously detailed by Nina Kalinina a few weeks ago.

I love old computers, and I enjoy looking at old user interfaces immensely. I could spend a whole evening on installing an old version of MS Word and playing with it: “Ah, look, how cute, they didn’t invent scrollbars just yet”. A special place in my heart is taken by user interfaces that were historically significant and yet fell into relative obscurity (like Windows 2 or BTRON).

This is why I absolutely had to try Bellcore MGR. An early windowing system (1984), it was made by the Bell Communications Research, and it looked like Plan 9’s older sister. The system was distributed over the Usenet, ported to every conceivable Unix-like system, including Minix, Linux and Coherent, and – eventually – mostly forgotten. The only two videos on YouTube that have something to do with MGR have a bit over 1000 views combined, and don’t really show it in the best light possible. And I think it’s a crying shame.

↫ Nina Kalinina

The reference to Plan 9 is apt, as MGR definitely seems to function almost exactly like Plan 9’s rio graphical user interface, including things like drawing a rectangle to open a new window. Rio is an acquired taste – to put it very mildly – and it seems MGR fits the same bill. There’s also $home movie, an entire video editor for MGR, which is honestly mind-blowing considering it’s running on a mere SPARCstation in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It has an incredibly unique UNIXy flavour:

If you don’t have 40 minutes to watch the tour, please do spend two minutes on this demo of the “$HOME MOVIE” system. It is “a suite of tools for the capture, editing and playback of window system sessions on a Sun Sparcstation” based on MGR. It is probably the most Unix way of making videos: the window manager dumps the rendering commands into a file, then the rendering commands can be altered with a set of small tools, some of which are in awk, and then these rendering commands can be packaged into a single demo.

↫ Nina Kalinina

Kalinina had to more or less reverse-engineer its unique video format, too, but in doing so managed to upload the original demonstration of $movie home, narrated by its creator and created in $movie home itself, to YouTube. Kalinina also created and uploaded a ready-made hard disk image of Debian 0.93 with Bellcore MGR preinstalled for use in Qemu and 86Box.

I think most of us are aware that compositors use multiple planes to render our user interfaces, and in the case of KDE’s Kwin specifically, they use two planes – one for the user interface, and one specifically for the mouse cursor. Kwin developer Xaver Hugl has been working on changing Kwin to use more than just two planes, and it turns out this delivers some considerable power use reductions and thus battery life improvements.

So, when can you use these changes and test them?

Due to various driver issues when trying to use overlays, like slow atomic tests on AMD as well as display freezes on some AMD and NVidia GPUs, this feature is still off by default.

However, if you want to experiment anyways or attempt to fix the drivers, starting from Plasma 6.5, you can set the KWIN_USE_OVERLAYS environment variable to enable the feature anyways. If you test it, please report your findings! If there’s problems in the drivers, we’d like to know and have bug reports for the GPU vendors of course, but also if things work well that would be nice to hear.

↫ Xaver Hugl

Leave it to Linux graphics-related developers to uncover driver bugs in graphics drivers.

An extensive study by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC highlights just how deeply inaccurate and untrustworthy “AI” news results really are.

• 45% of all AI answers had at least one significant issue.
• 31% of responses showed serious sourcing problems – missing, misleading, or incorrect attributions.
• 20% contained major accuracy issues, including hallucinated details and outdated information.
• Gemini performed worst with significant issues in 76% of responses, more than double the other assistants, largely due to its poor sourcing performance.
• Comparison between the BBC’s results earlier this year and this study show some improvements but still high levels of errors.

↫ BBC’s study press release

“AI” sucks even at its most basic function. It’s incredible how much money is being pumped into this scam, and how many people are wholeheartedly defending these bullshit generators as if their lives depended on it. If these tools can’t even summarise a text – something you learn in early primary school as a basic skill – how on earth are they supposed to perform more complex tasks like coding, making medical assessments, distinguish between a chips bag and a gun?

Maybe we deserve it.

Like clockwork, every six months, we have a new OpenBSD release. OpenBSD 7.8 adds support for the Raspberry Pi 5, tons of improvements to sleep, wake, and hibernate, the TCP stack can now run in parallel on multiple processors, and so much more. DRM has been updated to match Linux 6.12.50, and drivers for the Qualcomm Snapdragon DRM subsystem and Qualcomm DisplayPort controller were added as well.

The changelog is, as always, long and detailed, so head on over for the finer details. OpenBSD users will know how to upgrade, and new users can visit the download page.

Raymond Chen has another great post about some of the classic icons from Windows 95, this time focusing on pifmgr.dll. In this file, there are a variety of random-seeming icons, and it turns out they’re random for a reason: they were just a bunch a fun, generic icons intended for people to use when creating PIF files.

The icons in pifmgr.dll were created just for fun. They were not created with any particular programs in mind, with one obvious exception. They were just a fun mix of icons for people to use for their own homemade shortcut files.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

For those of us who didn’t grow up with Windows, or who, god forbid, are too young to know, PIF or personal information files are effectively shortcuts to DOS programs for use in a multitasking environment. A PIF file would not only point to the relevant DOS executable, but also contain information about the environment in which said executable was supposed to run. Their history goes back to IBM’s TopView, and Microsoft later embraced and adapted them for use in Windows.