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  • Windows Hotpatch comes to client version of Windows

    Fri 5:50pm By Thom Holwerda
    Good news for Windows users, and for once there’s not a hint of sarcasm here: Microsoft has started rolling out Windows Hotpatch to the client versions of Windows. This feature, which comes from the server versions of Windows, allows the operating system to…
  • How big is VMS?

    Fri 5:30pm By Thom Holwerda
    This question was asked during my Boot Camp presentation last fall in Boston, and over the past 35 years dozens of times people have asked, how big is VMS? That translates into “how many lines of code are in VMS”? I thought it was time to at least make a…
  • Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations tainted by the company’s role in the genocide in Gaza

    Fri 3:55pm By Thom Holwerda
    Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of this milestone, Bill Gates has published a blog post about the first code the company ever wrote. In 1975, Paul Allen and I created Microsoft because we believed in our vision of a computer on…
  • An AlphaStation’s SROM

    Fri 2:21pm By Thom Holwerda
    The AlphaStation 500 is a workstation from Digital, circa 1996. Mine is a 500 MHz model and has an Alpha 21164A processor (aka EV56). And the way it boots is weird. On your common-or-garden PC, there has always been some kind of ROM chip. It holds a piece of…
  • Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax

    Thu 5:28pm By Thom Holwerda
    There isn’t a lot to this story beyond the fact that in around 1990 I helped debug someone’s Lotus 1-2-3 set up via fax. But it’s a good reminder of how important the Zeroth Law of Debugging is (see below). Without some sort of online connection with…
  • Windows 9x QuickInstall simplifies installing Windows 98

    Thu 5:12pm By Thom Holwerda
    If you’re elbow-deep in ’90s retrocomputing and maintain a fleet of your own personal seemingly identical but definitely completely different Windows 98 machines, Windows 9x QuickInstall is tailor-made just for you. It takes the root file system of an…
  • Literally Windows on arm: here is Windows running on the Pixel Watch 3

    Wed 10:19am By Thom Holwerda
    Right off the bat, there is not that much use for a Pixel Watch with Windows on it. The project, as the maker says, is for “shits and giggles” and more like an April Fool’s joke. However, it shows how capable modern smartwatches are, with the Pixel Watch…
  • FreeDOS: history, legacy, and a valuable resource for old machines

    Wed 10:07am By Thom Holwerda
    FreeDOS is a free and open‐source operating system designed to be compatible with MS‑DOS. Developed to keep the DOS experience alive even after Microsoft ended support for MS‑DOS, FreeDOS has grown into a complete environment that not only preserves…
  • Nova Custom: this week’s sponsor

    Mon 11:22am By Thom Holwerda
    Nova Custom, based in The Netherlands, makes laptops focused on privacy, customisation, and freedom. Nova Custom laptops ship with either Linux, Windows, or no operating system, and they’re uniquely certified for Qubes OS (the V54 model will be certified…
  • The 32bit RISC OS needs to be ported to 64bit to survive, seeks help

    Mar 30, 2025, 7:29 pm By Thom Holwerda
    RISC OS, the operating system from the United Kingdom originally designed to run on Acorn Computer’s Archimedes computers – the first ARM computers – is still actively developed today. Especially since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, new life was…
  • Microsoft makes it even harder to use a local account on Windows 11

    Mar 30, 2025, 7:08 pm By Thom Holwerda
    Do you want to install Windows 11 without internet access or without an online Microsoft Account? It seems Microsoft really doesn’t want you to, as it has removed a very common and popular way of bypassing this requirement. In the release notes for the…
  • Blue95: Fedora Atomic Xfce converted to a Windows 95 desktop

    Mar 30, 2025, 4:20 pm By Thom Holwerda
    Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme. ↫ Blue95 GitHub page Exactly as it says on the tin. This is by far the easiest way to get the…
  • Microsoft releases Windows 11 roadmap tool to help make sense of Windows 11’s development

    Mar 30, 2025, 4:14 pm By Thom Holwerda
    I’ve complained about the utter inscrutability of the Windows release process for a long time, with Microsoft seemingly using channels, build numbers, code names, date-based version numbers, and so on interchangeably, making it incredibly hard to keep track…
  • US government’s attack on free speech, science, and research is causing a brain drain

    Mar 26, 2025, 2:55 pm By Thom Holwerda
    How do you create a brain drain and lose your status as eminent destination for scientists and researchers? The United States seems to be sending out questionnaires to researchers at universities and research institutes outside of the United States, asking…
  • KDE developers show off SDDM replacement

    Mar 26, 2025, 2:53 pm By Thom Holwerda
    KDE’s login manager, SDDM, has its share of problems, and as such, a number of KDE developers are working on replacement to fix many of these long-standing issues. So, what exactly is wrong with SDDM as it exists today? With SDDM, power management is…
  • Google moves all Android development behind closed doors

    Mar 26, 2025, 10:58 am By Thom Holwerda
    Up until now, Google developed several components of Android out in the open, as part of AOSP, while developing everything else behind closed doors, only releasing the source code once the final new Android version was released. This meant that Google had to…