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What do SourceHut, GNOMEās GitLab, and KDEās GitLab have in common, other than all three of them being forges? Well, it turns out all three of them have been dealing with immense amounts of traffic from āAIā scrapers, who are effectively performing DDoS attacks with such ferocity itās bringing down the infrastructures of these major open source projects. Being open source, and thus publicly accessible, means these scrapers have unlimited access, unlike with proprietary projects.
These āAIā scrapers do not respect robots.txt, and have so many expensive endpoints itās putting insane amounts of pressure on infrastructure. Of course, they use random user agents from an effectively infinite number of IP addresses. Blocking is a game of whack-a-mole you canāt win, and so the GNOME project is using a rather nuclear option called Anubis now, which aims to block āAIā scrapers with a heavy-handed approach that sometimes blocks real, genuine users as well.
The numbers are insane, as [NiccolĆ² Venerandi at Libre News details](https://thelibre.news/foss-infrastructure-is-under-attack-by-ai-companies/).
> Over Mastodon, one GNOME sysadmin, Bart Piotrowski, kindly shared some numbers to let people fully understand the scope of the problem. According to him, in around two hours and a half they received 81k total requests, and out of those only 3% passed Anubiās proof of work, hinting at 97% of the traffic being bots ā an insane number!
>
> [ā« NiccolĆ² Venerandi at Libre News](https://thelibre.news/foss-infrastructure-is-under-attack-by-ai-companies/)
Fedora is another project dealing with these attacks, with infrastructure sometimes being down for weeks as a result. Inkscape, LWN, Frama Software, Diaspora, and many more ā theyāre all dealing with the same problem: the vast majority of the traffic to their websites and infrastructure now comes from attacks by āAIā scrapers. Sadly, thereās doesnāt seem to be a reliable way to defend against these attacks just yet, so sysadmins and webmasters are wasting a ton of time, money, and resources fending off the hungry āAIā hordes.
These āAIā companies are raking in billions and billions of dollars from investors and governments the world over, trying to build [dead-end](https://www.osnews.com/story/141748/the-generative-ai-con/) text generators while sucking up huge amounts of data and wasting massive amounts of resources from, in this case, open source projects. If no other solutions can be found, the end game here could be that open source projects will start to make their bug reporting tools and code repositories much harder and potentially even impossible to access without jumping through a massive amount of hoops.
Everything about this āAIā bubble is gross, and I canāt wait for this bubble to pop so a semblance of sanity can return to the technology world. Until the next hype train rolls into the station, of course.
As is tradition.
Thereās no escaping Rust, and the language is leaving its mark everywhere. This time around, Chrome has replaced its use of FreeType with Skrifa, a Rust-based replacement.
> [Skrifa](https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations/tree/main/skrifa) is written in Rust, and created as a replacement for FreeType to make font processing in Chrome secure for all our users. Skifra takes advantage of Rustās memory safety, and lets us iterate faster on font technology improvements in Chrome. Moving from FreeType to Skrifa allows us to be both agile and fearless when making changes to our font code. We now spend far less time fixing security bugs, resulting in faster updates, and better code quality.
>
> [ā« Dominik Rƶttsches, Rod Sheeter, and Chad Brokaw](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/memory-safety-fonts)
The move to Skrifa is already complete, and itās being used now by Chrome users on Linux, Android, and ChromeOS, and as a fallback for users on Windows and macOS. The reasons for this change are the same as they always are for replacing existing tools with new tools written in Rust: security. FreeType is a security risk for Chrome, and by replacing it with something written in a memory-safe language like Rust, Google was able to eliminate a whole slew of types of security issues.
To ensure rendering correctness, Google performed a ton of pixel comparison tests to compare FreeType output to Skrifa output. On top of that, Google is continuously running similar tests to ensure no quality degradation sneaks into Skrifa as time progresses.
Whether anyone likes Rust or not, the reality of the matter is that using Rust provides tangible benefits that reduce cost and lower security risks, and as such, its use will keep increasing, and tried and true tools will continue to be replaced by Rust counterparts.
> Long ago, during the time of creation, I confidently waved my hand and allocated a 1GB ESP partition and a 1GB boot partition, thinking to myself with a confident smile that this would surely be more than enough for the foreseeable future. However, this foreseeable future quickly vanished along with my smile. What was bound to happen eventually came, but I didnāt expect it to arrive so soon. What could possibly require such a large boot partition? And how should we resolve this? Here, I would like to introduce the boot partition issue I encountered, as well as temporary coping methods and final solutions, mentioning the problems encountered along the way for reference.
>
> [ā« fernvenue](https://blog.fernvenue.com/archives/i-think-we-need-a-bigger-boot-partition/)
Some of us will definitely run into this issue at some point, so if youāre doing a fresh installation it might make sense to allocate a bit more space to your boot partition. If you have a running system and are bumping into the limitations of your boot partition and donāt want to reinstall, the linked article provides some possible solutions.
One of the two major open source desktop environments, GNOME, [just released version 48](https://release.gnome.org/48/), and itās got some very big and welcome improvements. First and foremost thereās dynamic triple-buffering, a feature that took over five years of extensive testing to get ready. It will improve the smoothness and fluidity of animations and other movements on the screen, as it did for KDE [when it landed there](https://www.osnews.com/story/139993/kde-plasma-6-1-released/) in the middle of last year.
GNOME 48 also brings notification stacking, combining notifications from the same source, improvements to the new default image viewer such as image editing features, a number of digital well-being options, as well as the introduction of a new, basic audio player designed explicitly for quickly playing individual audio files. Thereās also a few changes to GNOMEās text editor, and following in [KDEās recent footsteps](https://www.osnews.com/story/138663/kde-plasma-6-released/), GNOME 48 also brings HDR support.
Another major change are the new default fonts. Finally, Cantarell is gone, replaced by slightly modified versions of [Inter](https://rsms.me/inter/) and [Iosevka](https://typeof.net/Iosevka/). Considering I absolutely adore Inter and installing and setting it as my main font is literally the first thing I do on any system that allows me to, Iām fully behind this change. Inter is exceptional in that it renders great in both high and low DPI environments, and its readability is outstanding.
GNOME 48 will make its way to your distributionās repositories soon enough.
Oracle, the company owned by a guy who purchased a [huge chunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai) of the Kingdom of Hawaii [from the Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom), has [released Java 24](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-releases-java-24-302403853.html). Iāll be honest and upfront: I just donāt care very much at all about this, as the only interaction Iāve had with Java over the past, I donāt know, 15 years or so, is either because of Minecraft, or because of my obsession with ancient UNIX workstations where Java programs pop up in the weirdest of places. I know Java is massive and used everywhere, but going through [the list of changes and improvements](https://blogs.oracle.com/java/post/the-arrival-of-java-24) does not spark any joy in me at all, and just makes me want to stick my pinky in an electrical socket to make something interesting happen.
If you work with Java, you know all of this stuff already anyway, as youāve been excitedly trying to impress Nick from accounting with your knowledge of [Flexible Constructor Bodies](https://openjdk.org/jeps/492) and [Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanisms](https://openjdk.org/jeps/496) because heās just so dreamy and you desperately want to ask him out for a hot cup of [coffee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaStation#/media/File:Sun_Microsystems_JavaStation_right_side.jpg), but youāre not sure if heās married or has a boy or girlfriend so youāre just kind of scoping things out a bit too excitedly and now youāre worried you might be coming off as too desperate for his attention.
Anyway, thatās how offices work, right? Iāve never worked for anyone but myself and office settings induce a deep sense of existential dread in me, so my knowledge of office work, and Java if weāre honest, may be based a bit too much on ā90s sitcoms and dramas. Whatever, Java 24 is here. Do a happy dance.
> As of the 18th of February, OpenVMS, known for its stability and high-availability, 47 years old and ported to 4 different CPU architecture, has a package manager! This article shows you how to use the package manager and talks about a few of its quirks. Itās an early beta version, and you do notice that when using it. A small list of things I noticed, coming from a Linux (apt/yum/dnf) background: There seems to be no automatic dependency resolution and the dependencies it does list are incomplete. No update management yet, no removal of packages and no support for your own package repository, only the VSI official one. Service startup or login script changes are not done automatically. Packages with multiple installer files fail and require manual intervention. It does correctly identify the architectures, has search support and makes it way easier to install software. The time saved by downloading, manually copying and starting installation is huge, so even this early beta is a very welcome addition to OpenVMS.
>
> [ā« Remy van Elst](https://raymii.org/s/blog/After_47_years_OpenVMS_gets_a_package_manager_VSP.html)
Obviously, a way to install software packages without having to manually download them is a huge step forward for OpenVMS. The listed shortcomings might raise some eyebrows considering most of us are used to package management on Linux/BSD, which is far more advanced. Bear in mind, however, that this is a beta product, and itās quite obvious these missing essential features will be added over time. Luckily it at least lists dependencies, so letās hope actually automating installing them is in the works and will be available soon.
I actually have an OpenVMS virtual machine set up and running, but I find using it incredibly difficult ā but only because of my own lack of experience with and knowledge about OpenVMS, of course. Any experience of knowledge rooted in UNIX-based and Windows operating systems is useless here, even for the most basic of CLI tasks. If I find the time, Iād love to spend more time with it and get more acquainted with the way it works, including this new package manager.
Itās barely been two months after the [announcement](https://www.osnews.com/story/141621/pebbleos-becomes-open-source-new-pebble-device-announced/) that Pebble would return with new watches, [and theyāre already here ā well, sort of](https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watches). Pebble has announced two new watches for preorder, the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. The former is effectively a Pebble 2, upgraded with new internals, while the Core Time 2 is very similar, but comes with a colour e-ink display and a metal case. Theyāre up for preorder now at $149 and $225, respectively, with the Core 2 Duo shipping in July, and the Core Time 2 shipping in December.
Alongside this unveil, Eric Migicovsky, the creator of Pebble, also published [a blog post](https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones) detailing the trouble Pebble is and will have with making smartwatches for iOS users. Apple effectively makes it impossible for third parties to make a proper smartwatch for iOS, since access to basic functionality youād come to expect from such a device are locked by Apple, reserved only for its own Apple Watch. As such, Migicovsky makes it explicitly clear that iOS users who want to buy one of these new Pebbles will are going to have a very degraded experience compared to Android users.
Not only will Android users with Pebble have access to a ton more functionality, any Pebble features that could exist for both Android and iOS users will always come to Android first, and possibly iOS later. In fact, Migicovksy goes as far as suggesting that if you want a Pebble, you should buy an Android phone.
> I donāt want to see any tweets or blog posts or complaints or whatever later on about this. Iām publishing this now so you can make an informed decision about whether to buy a new watch or not. If youāre worried about this, the easiest solution is to buy an Android phone.
>
> [ā« Eric Migicovsky](https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones)
I have to hand it to Migicovksy ā I love the openness about this, and the fact heās making this explicitly clear to any prospective buyers. Thereās no sugarcoating or PR speak to try and please Tim Cook ā heās putting the blame squarely where it belongs: on Apple. Itās kind of unreal to see such directness about a new product, but as a Dutch person, it feels quite [natural](https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/dutch-culture-brutally-honest-people). We need more of this style of communication in the technology world, as it makes it much clearer that youāre getting ā and not getting.
I do hope that Pebbleās Android support functions without the need for Google Play Services or other proprietary Google code, since it would be great to have a proper, open source smartwatch fully supported by de-Googled Android.
A few months after [0.27.0 was released](https://www.osnews.com/story/141530/enlightenment-0-27-0-released/), weāve got a small update for Enlightenment today, [version 0.27.1](https://www.enlightenment.org/news/2025-03-14-enlightenment-0.27.1). Itās a short list of bugfixes, and one tiny new feature: you can now use the scroll wheel to change the volume when your cursor is hovering over the mixer controls.
Thatās it. Thatās the release.
Itās taken a Herculean seven-year effort, but GIMP 3.0 has finally been released. There are so many new features, changes, and improvements in this release that itās impossible to highlight all of them. First and foremost, GIMP 3.0 marks the shift to GTK3 ā this may be surprising considering GTK4 has been out for a while, but major applications such as GIMP tend to stick to more tried and true toolkit versions. GTK4 also brings with it the prickly discussion concerning a possible adoption of libadwaita, the GNOME-specific augmentations on top of GTK4. The other major change is full support for Wayland, but users of the legacy X11 windowing system donāt have to worry just yet, since GIMP 3.0 supports that, too.
As far as actual features go, thereās a ton here. Non-destructive layer effects is one of the biggest improvements.
> Another big change introduced in GIMP 3.0 is non-destructive (NDE) filters. In GIMP 2.10, filters were automatically merged onto the layer, which prevented you from making further edits without repeatedly undoing your changes. Now by default, filters stay active once committed. This means you can re-edit most GEGL filters in the menu on the layer dockable without having to revert your work. You can also toggle them on or off, selectively delete them, or even merge them all down destructively. If you prefer the original GIMP 2.10 workflow, you can select the āMerge Filtersā option when applying a filterĀ instead.
>
> [ā« GIMP 3.0 release notes](https://testing.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html)
Thereās also much better color space management, better layer management and control, the user interface has been improved across the board, and support for a ton of file formats have been added, from macOS icons to Amiga ILBM/IFF formats, and much more. GIMP 3.0 also improves compatibility with Photoshop files, and it can import more palette formats, including proprietary ones like Adobe Color Book (ACB) and Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE).
This is just a small selection, as GIMP 3.0 truly is a massive update. Itās available for Linux, Windows, and macOS, and if you wait for a few days itāll probably show up in your distributionās package repositories.
Settle down children, itās time for another great article by Cameron Kaiser. This time, theyāre going to tell us about the DEC Professional 380 running PRO/VENIX.
> The Pro 380 upgraded to the beefier J-11 (āJawsā) CPU from the PDP-11/73, running two to three times faster than the 325 and 350. It had faster RAM and came with more of it, and boasted quicker graphics with double the vertical resolution built right into the logic board. The 380 still has its faults, notably being two-thirds the speed of the 11/73 and having no cache, plus all of the 325/350ās incompatibilities. Taken on its merits, though, itās a tank of a machine, a reasonably powerful workstation, and the most practical PDP-adjacent thing you can actually slap on a (large) desk.
>
> This particular unit is one of the few artifacts I have left from a massive DEC haul almost twelve years ago. It runs PRO/VENIX, the only official DEC Unix option for the Pros, but in its less common final release (weāll talk about versions of Venix). I donāt trust the clanky ST-506 hard drive anymore, so today weāll convert it to solid state and double its base RAM to make it even more professional, and then play around in VENIX some for a taste of old-school classic Unix ā after, of course, some history.
>
> [ā« Cameron Kaiser](https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/03/more-pro-for-dec-professional-380.html)
Detailed, interesting, fascinating, and full of photos as always.
In 1994, a single Macintosh Performa model, the 550, came from the factory with a dedicated, hidden recovery partition that contained a System 7 system folder and a small application that would be set as bootable if the main operating system failed to boot. This application would then run, allowing you to recover your Mac using the system folder inside the recovery partition. This feature was apparently so obscure, few people knew it existed, and nobody had access to the original contents of the recovery partition anymore.
It took Doug Brown _a lot_ of searching to find a copy of this recovery partition. The issue is that nobody really knows how this partition is populated with the recovery data, so the only way to explore its contents was to somehow find a Performa 550 hard drive with a specific version of Mac OS that had never been reformatted after leaving the factory.
> The thing is, this whole functionality was super obscure. Itās understandable that people werenāt familiar with it. Apple publicly stated it was only included with this one specific Performa model. Their own documentation also said that it would be lost if you reformatted the hard drive. It was hiding in the background, so nobody really knew it was there, let alone thought about saving it. Also, I can say that the first thing a lot of people do when they obtain a classic computer is erase it in order to restore it to the factory state. Little did anyone know, if they reformatted the hard drive on a Performa 550, they could have been wiping out rare data that hadnāt been preserved!
>
> [ā« Doug Brown](https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2025/03/apples-long-lost-hidden-recovery-partition-from-1994-has-been-found/)
Brown found a copy, and managed to get the whole original functionality working again. Itās a fairly basic way of doing this, but we shouldnāt forget weāre talking 1994 here, and I donāt think any other operating system at the time had the ability to recover from an unbootable state like this. Like Brown, I wonder why it was abandoned so quickly. Perhaps Apple was unwilling to sacrifice the hard drive space?
Groundbreaking or not, itās still great to have this recovered and preserved for the ages.
Itās rare in this day and age that proprietary operating system vendors like Microsoft and Apple release updates youāre more than happy to install, but considering even a broken clock is right twice a day, weāve got one for you today. Microsoft released KB5053598 (OS Build 26100.3476) which āaddresses security issues for your Windows operating systemā. One of the āsecurity issuesā this update addresses, is Microsoftās āAIā text generator, Copilot. To address this glaring security issue, this update removes Copilot from your Windows installation altogether.
Sadly, itās only by mistake, and not by design.
> Weāre aware of an issue with the Microsoft Copilot app affecting some devices. The app is unintentionally uninstalled and unpinned from the taskbar.
>
> \[ā¦\]
>
> Microsoft is working on a resolution to address this issue.
>
> In the meantime, affected users can reinstall the app from the Microsoft Store and manually pin it to the taskbar.
>
> [ā« Microsoft Support](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/march-11-2025-kb5053598-os-build-26100-3476-a248e951-daef-43ad-aa10-0b99f551cec2)
Well, at least until Microsoft āfixesā this āissueā with KB5053598, consider this update a simple way to get rid of Copilot. Microsoft accidentally cared about its users for once, so cherish this moment ā it wonāt happen again.
Itās been a while, but thereās a [new release](https://savannah.nongnu.org/news/?id=10719) of [Ironclad](https://ironclad.nongnu.org/), the formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel written in [SPARK](https://www.adacore.com/about-spark) and [Ada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_\(programming_language\)). Aside from the usual bugfixes, this release moves Ironclad from multiboot to [Limine](https://limine-bootloader.org/), adds x86\_64 ACPI support for poweroff and reboot, improvements to PTY support, the VFS layer, and much more.
The easiest way to try out Ironclad is to download [Gloire](https://github.com/Ironclad-Project/Gloire), a distribution that uses Ironclad and the GNU tools. It can be installed in both a virtual machine and on real hardware.
> Mozillaās actions have been rubbing many [Firefox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox) fans the wrong way as of late, and inspiring them to look for alternatives. There are many choices for users who are looking for a browser that isnāt part of the Chrome monoculture but is full-featured and suitable for day-to-day use. For those who are willing to stay in the Firefox āfamilyā there are a number of good options that have taken vastly different approaches. This includes [GNU IceCat](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/), [Floorp](https://floorp.app/en), [LibreWolf](https://librewolf.net/), and [Zen](https://zen-browser.app/).
>
> [ā« Joe Brockmeier](https://lwn.net/Articles/1012453/)
Itās a tough situation, as weāre all aware. We donāt want the Chrome monoculture to get any worse, but with Mozillaās ever-increasing number of dubious decisions some people have been warning about for years, itās only natural for people to look elsewhere. Once you decide to drop Firefox, thereās really nowhere else to go but Chrome and Chrome skins, or the various Firefox skins. As an aside, I really donāt think these browsers should be called Firefox āforksā; all they really do is change some default settings, add in an extension or two, and make some small UI tweaks. They may qualify as forks in a technical sense, but I think that overstates the differentiation they offer.
Late last year, I tried my best to switch to KDEās Falkon web browser, but after a few months the issues, niggles, and shortcomings just started to get under my skin. I switched back to Firefox for a little while, contemplating where to go from there. Recently, I decided to hop onto the Firefox skin train just to get rid of some of the Mozilla telemetry and useless āfeaturesā theyāve been adding to Firefox, and after some careful consideration I decided to go with Waterfox.
Waterfox strikes a nice balance between the strict choices of LibreWolf ā which most users of LibreWolf seem to undo, if my timeline is anything to go by ā and the choices Mozilla itself makes. On top of that, Waterfox enables a few very nice KDE integrations Firefox itself and the other Firefox skins donāt have, making it a perfect choice for KDE users. Sadly, Waterfox isnāt packaged for most Linux distributions, so youāll have to resort to [a third-party packager](https://github.com/hawkeye116477/waterfox-deb-rpm-arch-AppImage).
In the end, none of the Firefox skins really address the core problem, as theyāre all still just Firefox. The problem with Firefox is Mozilla, and no amount of skins is going to change that.
> Googleās biggest announcement today, at least as it pertains to Android, is that the Vulkan graphics API is now the official graphics API for Android. Vulkan is a modern, low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that provides developers with more direct control over the GPU than older APIs like OpenGL. This increased control allows for significantly improved performance, especially in multi-threaded applications, by reducing CPU overhead. In contrast, OpenGL is an older, higher-level API that abstracts away many of the low-level details of the GPU, making it easier to use but potentially less efficient. Essentially, Vulkan prioritizes performance and explicit hardware control, while OpenGL emphasizes ease of use and cross-platform compatibility.
>
> [ā« Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority](https://www.androidauthority.com/porting-pc-games-to-android-3534575/)
Android has supported Vulkan since Android 7.0, released in 2016, so itās not like weāre looking at something earth-shattering here. The issue has been, as always with Android, fragmentation: itās taken this long for about 85% of Android devices currently in use to support Vulkan in the first place. In other words, Google mightāve wanted to standardise on Vulkan much sooner, but if only a relatively small number of Android devices support it, thatās going to be a hard sell.
In any event, from here on out, every application or game that wants to use the GPU on Android will have to do so through Vulkan, including everything inside Android. Itās still going to be a long process, though, as the requirement to use Vulkan will not fully come into effect until Android 17, and even then there will be exceptions for certain applications. Android tends to implement changes like this in phases, and the move to Vulkan is no different.
All of this does mean that older devices with GPUs that do not support Vulkan, or at least not properly, will not be able to be updated to the Vulkan-only releases of Android, but letās be real here ā those kinds of devices were never going to be updated anyway.
> Ted Unangst published [_dude, where are your syscalls?_](https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/dude-where-are-your-syscalls) on flak yesterday, with a neat demonstration of OpenBSDās [pinsyscall](https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230222064027) security feature, whereby only pre-registered addresses are allowed to make system calls. Whether it strengthens or weakens security is [up for debate](https://isopenbsdsecu.re/mitigations/pinsyscall/), but regardless itās an interesting, low-level programming challenge. The original demo is fragile for multiple reasons, and requires manually locating and entering addresses for each build. In this article I show how to fix it. To prove that itās robust, I ported an entire, real application to use raw system calls on OpenBSD.
>
> [ā« Chris Wellons](https://nullprogram.com/blog/2025/03/06/)
Some light reading for the weekend.
> Elon Muskās Tesla is waving a red flag, warning that Donald Trumpās trade war risks dooming US electric vehicle makers, triggering job losses, and hurting the economy.
>
> In an unsigned [letter](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tesla-USTR-letter-Trump-tariffs-3-11-25.pdf) to the US Trade Representative (USTR), Tesla cautioned that Trumpās tariffs could increase costs of manufacturing EVs in the US and forecast that any retaliatory tariffs from other nations could spike costs of exports.
>
> [ā« Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/tesla-urges-overhaul-of-trump-tariffs-hurting-ev-industry/)
Back in 2020, scientists at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, [created the smallest string instrument](https://gizmodo.com/nano-violin-has-strings-a-millionth-of-an-inch-thick-5650126) that can produce tones audible by human ears when amplified. Its strings were a mere micrometer thin, or one millionth of a meter, and about half to one millimeter long. Using a system of tiny weights and combs producing tiny vibrations, tones can be created.
And yet, this tiny violin _still_ isnāt small enough for Tesla.
Weāve got the Haiku activity report covering February, and aside from the usual slew of bug fixes and minor improvements, thereās one massive improvement that deserves attention.
> waddlesplash continued his ongoing memory management improvements, fixes, and cleanups, implementing more cases of resizing (expanding/shrinking) memory areas when thereās a virtual memory reservation adjacent to them (and writing tests for these cases) in the kernel. These changes were the last remaining piece needed before the new `malloc` implementation for userland (mostly based on OpenBSDās malloc, but with a few additional optimizations and a Haiku-specific process-global cache added) could be merged and turned on by default. There were a number of followup fixes to the kernel and the new allocatorās āglueā and global caching logic since, but the allocator has been in use in the nightlies for a few weeks with no serious issues. It provides modest performance improvements over the old allocator in most cases, and in some cases that were pathological for the old allocator (GCC LTO appears to have been one), provides order-of-magnitude (or mode) performance improvements.
>
> [ā« waddlesplash on the Haiku website](https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/waddlesplash/2025-03-11-haiku_activity_contract_report_february_2025/)
Haiku also continues replacing implementations of standard C functions with those from musl, Haiku can now be built on FreeBSD and Linux distributions that use musl, C5/C6 C-states were disabled for Intel Skylake to fix boot problems on that platform, and many, many more changes. Thereās also bad news for fans of Gopher: support for the protocol was removed from WebPositive, Haikuās native web browser.
> When I checked where Windows Defender had actually detected the threat, it was in the [Fan Control](https://getfancontrol.com/) app I use to intelligently cool my PC. Windows Defender had broken it, and thatās why my fans were running amok. For others, the threat was detected in Razer Synapse, SteelSeries Engine, OpenRGB, Libre Hardware Monitor, CapFrameX, MSI Afterburner, OmenMon, FanCtrl, ZenTimings, and Panorama9, among many others.
>
> āAs of now, all third-party/open-source hardware monitoring softwares are screwed,ā Fan Control developer RĆ©mi Mercier tells me.
>
> [ā« Sean Hollister at The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/report/629259/winring0-windows-defender-fan-control-pc-monitoring-alert-quarantine)
Anyone reading OSNews can probably solve this puzzle. Many fan control and hardware monitoring applications for Windows make use of the same open source driver: [WinRing0](https://github.com/GermanAizek/WinRing0). Uniquely, this kernel-level driver is signed, since itās from back in the days when developers could self-sign these sorts of drivers, but the signed version has a known vulnerability thatās quite dangerous considering itās a kernel-level driver. The vulnerability has been fixed, but signing this new version ā and keeping it signed ā is a big ordeal and quite expensive, since these days, drivers have to be signed by Microsoft.
And it just so happens that Windows Defender has started marking this driver, and thus any tool that uses it, as dangerous, sending it to quarantine. The result is failing hardware monitoring and fan control applications for quite a few Windows users. Some companies have invested in developing their own closed-source alternatives, but theyāre not sharing them. Luckily, Windows OEM iBuyPower says itās trying to get the patched version of WinRing0 signed, and if that happens, they will share it back with the community. Classy.
For now, though, hardware monitoring and fan control on Windows might be a bit of an ordeal.
> One of the biggest behind-the-scenes changes in the upcoming Plasma 6.4 release is the split of kwin\_x11 and kwin\_wayland codebases. With this blog post, I would like to delve in what led us to making such a decision and what it means for the future of kwin\_x11.
>
> [ā« Vlad Zahorodnii](https://blog.vladzahorodnii.com/2025/03/13/kwin_x11-and-kwin_wayland-split/)
For the most part, this change wonāt mean much for users of KWin on either Wayland or X11, at least for now. At least for the remainder of the Plasma 6.x life cycle, kwin\_x11 will be maintained, and despite the split, you can continue to have both kwin\_x11 and kwin\_wayland installed and use them interchangeably. Donāt expect any new features, though; kwin\_x11 will get the usual bug fixes, some backports, and theyāll make sure it keeps working with any new KDE frameworks introduced during the 6.x cycle, but thatās all youāre going to get if youāre using KDE on X11.
Thereās one area where this split might cause problems, though, and thatās if youāre using a particular type of KWin extension. While KWin extensions written in JavaScript and QML are backend agnostic and can be used without issues on both variants of KWin, extensions written in C++ are not. These extensions need to be coded specifically for either kwin\_x11 or kwin\_wayland, and with Wayland being the default for KDE, this may mean some of these extensions will leave X11 users behind to reduce the maintenance burden.
It seems that very few people are still using KDE on X11, and kwin\_x11 doesnāt receive much testing anymore, so it makes sense to start preparations for the inevitable deprecation. While I think the time of X11 on Linux has come and gone, itās unclear what this will mean for KDE on the BSDs. While Wayland is available on all of the BSDs in varying states of maturity, I honestly donāt know if theyāre ready for a Wayland-only KDE at this point in time.
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