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That time “AI” translation almost caused a fight between a doctor and my parents

5 days ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

What if you want to find out more about the PS/2 Model 280? You head out to Google, type it in as a query, and realise the little “AI” summary that’s above the fold is clearly wrong. Then you run the same query again, multiple times, and notice that each time, the “AI” overview gives a different wrong answer, with made-up details it’s pulling out of its metaphorical ass.
GNOME OS ready for more extensive testing

5 days ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

While it’s still early days and it’s not recommended for non-technical audiences, GNOME OS is now ready for developers and early adopters who know how to deal with occasional bugs (and importantly, file those bugs when they occur). ↫ Tobias BernardThis is great news, and means GNOME OS is progressing nicely. I’m a proponent of this and KDE’s equivalent project, because it allows the people working on GNOME and KDE to really showcase their work in optimal, controlled conditions.
Harpoom: of course the Apple Network Server can be hacked into running Doom

5 days ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

Of course you can run Doom on a $10,000+ Apple server running IBM AIX. Of course you can. Well, you can now. Now, let’s go ahead and get the grumbling out of the way. No, the ANS is not running Linux or NetBSD. No, this is not a backport of NCommander’s AIX Doom, because that runs on AIX 4.3. The Apple Network Server could run no version of AIX later than 4.1.5 and there are substantial technical differences.
“My experience with Canonical’s interview process”

5 days ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

A short while ago, we talked about the hellish hiring process at a Silicon Valley startup, and today we’ve got another one. Apparently, it’s an open secret that the hiring process at Canonical is a complete dumpster fire. I left Google in April 2024, and have thus been casually looking for a new job during 2024. A good friend of mine is currently working at Canonical, and he told me that it’s quite a nice company with a great working environment.
Flatpak “not being actively developed anymore”

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

At the Linux Application Summit (LAS) in April, Sebastian Wick said that, by many metrics, Flatpak is doing great. The Flatpak application-packaging format is popular with upstream developers, and with many users. More and more applications are being published in the Flathub application store, and the format is even being adopted by Linux distributions like Fedora.
The Copilot delusion

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

And the “copilot” branding. A real copilot? That’s a peer. That’s a certified operator who can fly the bird if you pass out from bad taco bell. They train. They practice. They review checklists with you. GitHub Copilot is more like some guy who played Arma 3 for 200 hours and thinks he can land a 747. He read the manual once. In Mandarin. Backwards. And now he’s shouting over your shoulder, “Let me code that bit real quick, I saw it in a Slashdot comment!”At that point, you’re not working with a copilot.
The flip phone web: browsing with the original Opera Mini

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

Opera Mini was first released in 2005 as a web browser for mobile phones, with the ability to load full websites by sending most of the work to an external server. It was a massive hit, but it started to fade out of relevance once smartphones entered mainstream use. Opera Mini still exists today as a web browser for iPhone and Android—it’s now just a tweaked version of the regular Opera mobile browser, and you shouldn’t use Opera browsers.
Apple said to switch to year to identify releases of its operating systems

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

The next Apple operating systems will be identified by year, rather than with a version number, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That means the current iOS 18 will give way to “iOS 26,” said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan is still private. Other updates will be known as iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26 and visionOS 26.
The length of file names in early Unix

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

If you use Unix today, you can enjoy relatively long file names on more or less any filesystem that you care to name. But it wasn’t always this way. Research V7 had 14-byte filenames, and the System III/System V lineage continued this restriction until it merged with BSD Unix, which had significantly increased this limit as part of moving to a new filesystem (initially called the ‘Fast File System’, for good reasons).
Microsoft unveils Microsoft’s competitor to Microsoft’s winget

1 week ago | osnews.com | Thom Holwerda

One of the ways in which Windows (and macOS) trails behind the Linux and BSD world is the complete lack of centralised, standardised application management. Windows users still have to scour the web to download sketchy installers straight from the Windows 95 days, amassing a veritable collection updaters in the process, which either continuously run in the background, or annoy you with update pop-ups when you launch an application.