The Fedora 37 development team is considering dropping support for non-UEFI BIOS. Linuxiac reports: The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, or UEFI, is a modern method of handling the boot process. UEFI is similar to Legacy; however, the boot data is stored in a .efi file rather than the firmware. In the case of Fedora, while the change may take some time, the new Fedora x86_64 installations will no longer work on non-UEFI platforms. On x86_64 architectures, Fedora 37 will mark legacy BIOS installation as deprecated in favor of UEFI. While systems already using Legacy BIOS to boot will continue to be supported, new Legacy BIOS installations on these architectures will be impossible.

Google is preparing to limit the availability of outdated apps on the Play Store, the company has announced. The Verge reports: From November 1st, all existing apps in the store should aim to target an API level within two years of the latest major Android OS release. If they don't, Google says it'll place limits on which users are able to discover or install them. The changes are meant to ensure that software available from the Play Store makes use of Android's latest privacy and security features. Device owners "expect to realize the full potential of all the privacy and security protections Android has to offer," Google product management director Krish Vitaldevara writes in a blog post. "Expanding our target level API requirements will protect users from installing older apps that may not have these protections in place."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: Mainframes and AI? Isn't that something like a Model-T Ford with a Tesla motor? Actually, no. Mainframes are as relevant in 2022 as they were in the 1960s. IBM's new IBM z16, with its integrated on-chip Telum AI accelerator, is ready to analyze real-time transactions, at scale. This makes it perfect for mainframe mission-critical workloads such as healthcare and financial transactions. This 21st century Big Iron AI accelerator is built onto its core Telum processor. With this new dual-processor 5.2 GHz chip and its 16 cores, it can perform 300 billion deep-learning inferences per day with one-millisecond latency. Can you say fast? IBM can.

Anthony Saporito, a senior technical staff member for IBM Z hardware development, said "One of the Telum design's key innovations is we built an AI accelerator right onto the silicon of the chip and we directly connected all of the cores and built an ecosystem up the stack. Through the hardware design, firmware, the operating systems, and the software, deep learning is built into all of the transactions." According to Patrick Moorhead, Moor Insights & Strategy's chief analyst, "The AI accelerator is a game-changer. The z16 with z/OS has a 20x response time with 19x higher throughput when inferencing compared to a comparable x86 cloud server with 60ms average network latency."

The new model z16 also includes a so-called quantum-safe system to protect organizations from near-future threats that might crack today's encrypted files. This is done with the z16's support of the Crypto Express8S adapter. Built around a CCA cryptographic coprocessor and a PKCS #11 cryptographic coprocessor, it enables users to develop quantum-safe cryptography. It also works with classical cryptography. If you want your data and transactions to be safe both today and tomorrow, this deserves your attention.

It's been a long road, but Microsoft announced on April 4 a preview of Arm support on Azure virtual machines via its work with Ampere Computing. ZDNet reports: Ampere is a startup that makes server chips. Ampere announced last year it had signed up Microsoft and Tencent Holdings as major customers. "We are now supporting Arm on Azure as well. This has been a long journey to bring up Ampere on Azure with Windows as the Root Host OS! we are also supporting Windows 11 Arm VMs in preview for developers!" tweeted Hari Pulapaka, the director of PM for Azure Host OS and the Windows OS platform. "FYI all Windows developers who have been asking for VM support in Azure, it's here now."

Azure VMs with Ampere Altra Arm-based processors will offer up to 50 percent better price-performance than comparable x86-based VMs for scale-out workloads, Microsoft officials said. These new VMs are also for Web servers, application servers, open-source databases, gaming servers, media servers, and more, they added. The preview is initially available in the West US 2, West Central US, and West Europe Azure regions. Ampere's announcement of the Azure VM preview is here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What makes the ["Infinite Mac"] project unique isn't necessarily the fact that it's browser-based; it has been possible to run old DOS, Windows, and Mac OS versions in browser windows for quite a while now. Instead, it's the creative solutions that developer Mihai Parparita has come up with to enable persistent storage, fast download speeds, reduced processor usage, and file transfers between the classic Mac and whatever host system you're running it on. Parparita details some of his work in this blog post.

Beginning with a late 2017 browser-based port of the Basilisk II emulator, Parparita wanted to install old apps to more faithfully re-create the experience of using an old Mac, but he wanted to do it without requiring huge downloads or running as a separate program as the Macintosh.js project does. To solve the download problem, Parparita compressed the disk image and broke it up into 256K chunks that are downloaded on demand rather than up front. "Along with some old fashioned web optimizations, this makes the emulator show the Mac's boot screen in a second and be fully booted in 3 seconds, even with a cold HTTP cache," Parparita wrote.

CPU usage was another issue. Old operating systems and processors didn't really distinguish between active and idle processor states -- your computer was either on or off. So when you emulate these old systems, they'll ramp one of your CPU cores to 100% whether you're actually using the emulator or not. Parparita used existing Basilisk II features to reduce CPU usage, only requiring full performance when "there was user input or a screen refresh was required." Infinite Mac won't run later releases of classic Mac OS (including 8.5, 8.6, and 9) because those releases ran exclusively on PowerPC Macs, dropping support for the old Motorola 68000-based processors. Emulators like QEMU are capable of emulating PowerPC Macs, but (at least as far as I am aware) there are no easy browser-based implementations that exist. Not yet, anyway.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For months, a small group of volunteers has worked to get this Arch Linux-based distribution up and running on Apple Silicon Macs, adapting existing drivers and (in the case of the GPU) painstakingly writing their own. And that work is paying off -- last week, the team released its first alpha installer to the general public, and as of yesterday, the software supports the new M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio. In the current alpha, an impressive list of hardware already works, including Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 over the Thunderbolt ports (USB 3.0 only works on Macs with USB-A ports, but USB 3.0 over Thunderbolt is "coming soon"), and the built-in display. But there are still big features missing, including DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, the webcam, Bluetooth, sleep mode, and GPU acceleration. That said, regarding GPU acceleration, the developers say that the M1 is fast enough that a software-rendered Linux desktop feels faster on the M1 than a GPU-accelerated desktop feels on many other ARM chips.

Asahi's developers don't think the software will be "done," with all basic M1-series hardware and functionality supported and working out of the box, "for another year, maybe two." By then, Apple will probably have introduced another generation or two of M-series chips. But the developers are optimistic that much of the work they're doing now will continue to work on future generations of Apple hardware with relatively minimal effort. [...] If you want to try Asahi Linux on an M1 Mac, the current installer is run from the command line and requires "at least 53GB of free space" for an install with a KDE Plasma desktop. Asahi only needs about 15GB, but the installer requires you to leave at least 38GB of free space to the macOS install so that macOS system updates don't break. From there, dual-booting should work similarly to the process on Intel Macs, with the alternate OS visible from within Startup Disk or the boot picker you can launch when your start your Mac. Future updates should be installable from within your new Asahi Linux installation and shouldn't require you to reinstall from scratch.

To date, Google has released three Assistant Smart Displays. 9to5Google can now report that the company is working on a new Nest Hub for 2022 with a dockable tablet form factor where the screen detaches from a base/speaker. From the report: According to a source that has proven familiar with Google's plans, the next Nest Smart Display will have a removable screen that can be used as a tablet. It attaches to the base/speaker for a more conventional-looking smart home device. This new form factor comes as Google has spent the last few months adding more interface elements to the 2nd-gen Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen reveals a row of "apps" above the settings bar. You can open a fullscreen grid of icons from there. Applications and games on the Nest Hub are essentially web views, so this is technically a launcher for shortcuts.

Speaking of the web, Google also spent the end of last year adding a more feature-rich browser that even features a Gboard-esque keyboard. You can also send sites directly to your phone and enable text-to-speech. Both of these additions can be seen as laying the groundwork for a tablet-like experience, with web browsing obviously being a popular task on big screens. Many questions about the implementation remain unknown, including what OS/experience the undocked tablet will run. Chrome OS is likely too power-hungry (and as such costly) considering the affordability of Nest devices, while Android would open the door to existing apps and the Play Store.

Lucas Brooks, an avid Windows fan who digs through and analyzes its early iterations, recently shared his discovery of an easter egg that's been hiding in Windows 1.0 for nearly 37 years. PC Gamer reports: Brooks discovered the secret, a credits list of Windows developers and a "congratulations" message, buried in the data of a smiley face bitmap file that came with the OS. The data for the credits was encrypted, and according to Brooks, the tools he needed to extract the data didn't even exist at the time of the OS' release.

There's also a name in the credits all PC gamers will recognize: Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. Newell began his career at Microsoft after dropping out of Harvard, and contributed to the development of the first three iterations of Windows. He also led the team that ported Doom to Windows from DOS, a crucial step in the transition between the operating systems.

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece: Protest is an important element of free speech that should be protected. Openness and inclusivity are cornerstones of the culture of open source, and the tools of open source communities are designed for global access and participation. Collectively, the very culture and tooling of open source -- issue tracking, messaging systems, repositories -- offer a unique signaling channel that may route around censorship imposed by tyrants to hold their power.

Instead of malware, a better approach to free expression would be to use messages in commit logs to send anti-propaganda messages and to issue trackers to share accurate news inside Russia of what is really happening in Ukraine at the hands of the Russian military, to cite two obvious possibilities. There are so many outlets for open source communities to be creative without harming everyone who happens to load the update.

We encourage community members to use both the freedoms and tools of open source innovatively and wisely to inform Russian citizens about the reality of the harm imposed on Ukrainian citizens and to support humanitarian and relief efforts in and supportive of Ukraine. Longer term, it's likely these weaponizations are like spitting into the wind: The downsides of vandalizing open source projects far outweigh any possible benefit, and the blowback will ultimately damage the projects and contributors responsible. By extension, all of open source is harmed. Use your power, yes -- but use it wisely.

Roku device owners will soon have a whole host of new personalization features, including all-new Photo Streams, with the Roku OS 11. From a report: Firstly, when Roku OS 11 rolls out to users in the weeks ahead, they'll be able to change their screensaver to display their own photography or images with Photo Streams. Not only will Photo Streams allow users to display photos from their desktop or mobile device on Roku, but users will also be able to share Streams with other Roku device owners as well. Once a Stream is shared, other Roku owners will be able to add to it, allowing everyone to collaborate on a shared album. Roku OS 11 will also introduce a new "what to watch on Roku" menu, a personally curated hub added to the home screen menu that will suggest popular and recently released TV and movies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: This may feel like deja vu because Google itself mistakenly leaked this announcement a few days ago, but the company today officially announced the launch of Steam OS on Chrome OS. Before you run off to install it, there are a few caveats: This is still an alpha release and only available on the more experimental and unstable Chrome OS Dev channel. The number of supported devices is also still limited since it'll need at least 8GB of memory, an 11th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and Intel Iris Xe Graphics. That's a relatively high-end configuration for what are generally meant to be highly affordable devices and somewhat ironically means that you can now play games on Chrome OS devices that are mostly meant for business users. The list of supported games is also still limited but includes the likes of Portal 2, Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Half-Life 2, Stardew Valley, Factorio, Stellaris, Civilization V, Fallout 4, Dico Elysium and Untitled Goose Game.

Microsoft is pushing ahead with plans to warn Windows 11 users that have installed the operating system on unsupported hardware. In a new update to Windows 11, a watermark has appeared on the desktop wallpaper for unsupported systems, alongside a similar warning in the landing page of the settings app. From a report: Microsoft had been testing these changes last month, but they're now rolling out to Release Preview just ahead of a full release to all Windows 11 users in the coming days. While Microsoft doesn't mention the addition of a watermark in its "improvements" list for this update, testers have noticed it's included. If Windows 11 is running on unsupported hardware, a new desktop watermark will state "System requirements not met. Go to settings to learn more." It's similar, but far less prominent, to the semi-transparent watermark that appears in Windows if you haven't activated the OS.

"Asahi Linux aims to bring you a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon Macs," explains the project's web site.

And now that first Asahi Linux alpha release is out — ready for testing on M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max machines (except Mac Studio): We're really excited to finally take this step and start bringing Linux on Apple Silicon to everyone. This is only the beginning, and things will move even more quickly going forward!

Keep in mind that this is still a very early, alpha release. It is intended for developers and power users; if you decide to install it, we hope you will be able to help us out by filing detailed bug reports and helping debug issues. That said, we welcome everyone to give it a try — just expect things to be a bit rough.... Asahi Linux is developed by a group of volunteers, and led by marcan as his primary job. You can support him directly via Patreon and GitHub Sponsors....

Can I dual-boot macOS and Linux?

Yes! In fact, we expect you to do that, and the installer doesn't support replacing macOS at this point. This is because we have no mechanism for updating system firmware from Linux yet, and until we do it makes sense to keep a macOS install lying around for that. You can have as many macOS and Linux installs as you want, and they will all play nicely and show up in Apple's boot picker. Each Linux install acts as a self-contained OS and should not interfere with the others.

Note that keeping a macOS install around does mean you lose ~70GB of disk space (in order to allow for updates, since the macOS updater is quite inefficient). In the future we expect to have a mechanism for firmware updates from Linux and better integration, at which point we'll be comfortable recommending Linux-only setups....

Is this just Arch Linux ARM?

Pretty much! Most of our work is in the kernel and a few core support packages, and we rely on Linux's excellent existing ARM64 support. The Asahi Linux reference distro images are based off of Arch Linux ARM and simply add our own package repository, which only adds a few packages. You can freely convert between Arch Linux ARM and Asahi Linux by adding or removing this repository and the relevant packages, although vanilla Arch Linux ARM kernels will not boot on these machines at this time.
The project's home page adds that "All contributors are welcome, of any skill level!"

"Doing this requires a tremendous amount of work, as Apple Silicon is an entirely undocumented platform," the team explains. "In particular, we will be reverse engineering the Apple GPU architecture and developing an open-source driver for it." But they're already documenting the Apple Silicon platform on their GitHub wiki. We will eventually release a remix of Arch Linux ARM, packaged for installation by end-users, as a distribution of the same name. The majority of the work resides in hardware support, drivers, and tools, and it will be upstreamed to the relevant projects....

Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn't a hack or an omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though they probably won't help with the development). As long as no code is taken from macOS to build the Linux support, the result is completely legal to distribute and for end-users to use, as it would not be a derivative work of macOS.
An interesting observataion from Slashdot reader mrwireless: It once again seems Apple is informally supportive of these efforts, as the recent release of OS Monterey 12.3 makes the process even simpler. As Twitter user Matthew Garrett writes:

"People who hate UEFI should read https://github.com/AsahiLinux/... — Apple made deliberate design choices that allow third party OSes to run on M1 hardware without compromising security, and with much less closed code than on basically any modern x86."

At the 2022 Google for Games Developer Summit where its Stadia B2B cloud gaming platform was unveiled, Google announced the long-awaited availability of Steam on Chromebooks. 9to5Google reports: Google specifically said that the "Steam Alpha just launched, making this longtime PC game store available on select Chromebooks for users to try." That said, no other details appear to be live this morning, but we did reveal the device list last month. As we noted at the time: "At a minimum, your Chromebook needs to have an (11th gen) Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and a minimum of 7 GB of RAM. This eliminates almost all Chromebooks but those in the upper-mid range and high end."

Google today said "you can check that out on the Chromebook community forum." The post in question is now live, but without any actual availability timeline beyond "coming soon." However, we did learn that the "early, alpha-quality version of Steam" will first come to the Chrome OS Dev channel for a "small set" of devices.

Meanwhile, Google also said Chrome OS is getting a new "games overlay" on "select" Android titles to make them "playable with user-driven keyboard and mouse configurations on Chromebooks without developer changes." It will launch later this year in a public beta. Further reading: The part of the keynote where this announcement was made can be viewed here.

Google's Domain Name Registrar is Out of Beta After Seven Years

Cognitive Dissident writes: Ars Technica is reporting a major new vulnerability in Linux. Named "Dirty Pipeline" it involves abuse of 'pipes' at the shell level as you might guess.

"Much of the most widely used free and open source software is developed by only a handful of contributors," warns the Linux Foundation, in the executive summary for its massive new census of free and open source software application libraries. It was prepared in conjunction with Harvard's Laboratory for Innovation Science — and that's just one of its five high-level findings.

The census also notes "the increasing importance of individual developer account security," but also the persistence of legacy software, the need for a standardized naming schema for software components, and "complexities" around package versions. But there's also just a lot of data about package popularity, writes SD Times: The report, Census II, is a follow-up to Census I, which was conducted in 2015 to identify the packages in Debian Linux that were most critical to the operation and security of the kernel. According to the Linux Foundation, Census II allows for a more "complete picture of free and open source (FOSS) adoption."

"Understanding what FOSS packages are the most critical to society allows us to proactively support projects that warrant operations and security support," said Brian Behlendorf, executive director at Linux Foundation's Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).
The census "aggregates data from over half a million observations of FOSS libraries used in production applications at thousands of companies," according to its executive summary. It argues that preserving FOSS will require this kind of data-sharing (about where and how FOSS packages are being used ) as well as coordination — including standardizing terminology — and of course, investment.

"The motivation behind publishing these findings is to not only inform, but also to inspire action by developers to improve their security practices and by end users to support the FOSS ecosystem and developers who need assistance." (It suggests companies companies could provide not just financial support but also the technical talent and their time.) The results take the form of eight Top 500 lists — four that include version numbers in the analysis and four that are version agnostic. Further, as mentioned above, we present npm and non-npm packages in separate lists... Although these lists provide valuable, important insights into the most widely used FOSS projects, it is important to also consider the level of security related to these projects. Therefore, in each list, we also include the "Tiered %" measure from the OpenSSF Best Practices Badging Program....

A year and a half later, Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service has formally launched in the U.S. for Android, iOS, Chrome OS, macOS and Windows. Engadget reports: The core Luna+ service with over 100 games will normally cost $10 per month, with the kid-friendly Family Channel and Ubisoft+ Channels available for a respective $6 and $18 per month. Amazon hopes to reel in newcomers by dropping the monthly fees of Luna+ and the Family channel to $6 and $3 for anyone who signs up during March. Existing users just have to maintain their subscriptions to lock in that pricing.

The official debut comes alongside some new channels. A Prime Gaming channel, as the name implies, gives Amazon Prime members a free, rotating mix of games. The March selection will include titles like Devil May Cry 5 and Flashback. Pay $5 per month for the Retro Channel and you'll get Capcom and SNK classics like Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and Metal Slug 3, while a similar outlay for the Jackbox Games Channel provides access to all eight Jackbox Party Pack titles. Luna's latest update also makes it simpler to stream gameplay from a Fire TV device, Mac or Windows PC on Twitch.

Jolla, a Finnish startup that develops a mobile Linux-based alternative to Google's Android which has had some take-up by the Russian government in the past, is looking to restructure its business to jettison links to the Russian state. TechCrunch reports: We reached out to the startup earlier this week to ask if it was concerned about the impact of looming EU sanctions on Russia -- given how, since 2018, it has counted Russian telecom company, Rostelecom, as a strategic investor. "We have actually ramped down business and exports to Russia already in 2021," CEO and co-founder Sami Pienimaki told TechCrunch. "Thus, the potential tech sanctions would not impact Jolla's business anymore. In parallel, Jolla is growing in particular rapidly in the automotive sector, and it formed already significant part of our 2021 revenues. In regards the ownership, that is correct, and something we're looking to re-structure during this year," he also confirmed. Sailfish has been certified in Russia for government and corporate use since 2016.

Apple appears to be exploring the possibility of integrating a fully functioning Mac within a keyboard, reminiscent of home computers of the 80s, such as the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. MacRumors: The concept was revealed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in a new Apple patent application called "Computer in an input device," which describes a thicker Magic Keyboard-style chassis with "all the components of a high performance computer" integrated under the hood. The patent describes the premise for such a device, which could be plugged into a separate external display via a single I/O port designed to receive both data and power, and wirelessly paired with a trackpad or mouse for additional input.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [T]he last couple Windows 11 Insider Preview builds have augmented Windows 11's touchscreen capabilities. The build released to Dev channel users last week included new gestures, changes to how snapping windows works when in tablet mode, and a few other improvements. And a new build released today totally overhauls the taskbar for touchscreens.

Windows 11 in its current form adds more space between icons when you're using your device as a tablet, but the new preview goes further. When you're using apps, the taskbar will shrink to a narrow strip across the bottom of the screen: it's still tall enough to show the clock and your network, sound, and battery status icons, but all your pinned apps and other system tray icons are hidden. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen or closing an app window brings up a new, larger version of the taskbar with larger, more finger-friendly icons and spacing. The taskbar disappears again once you've launched your app. "Windows 11 still doesn't have a dedicated Tablet Mode toggle like Windows 10 did," notes Ars. "Instead, the OS relies on signals from your hardware to enable and disable the tablet-centric UI tweaks."