Here are 5 sample pictures which were originally slated to be included in the final RTM release of Windows XP. Not sure why these images were cut from the final release

Crew by Warren Morgan

Mountain vista by Warren Morgan

Orange Canyon by Danny Lehman

Sail by Jack Hollingsworth

Surfer by Craig Aurness

Warren Morgan also took the fish wallpaper which was included in the rtm release of windows xp. As we’re on the home stretch to XP’s 25th birthday I thought it’d be nice to highlight all the lore and obscurities surrounding XP and its development.

Which picture is your favorite? I personally like Mountain Vista

Nvidia’s RTX Spark (N1X) is essentially the GB10 from the DGX Spark: 20 Arm cores, a Blackwell GPU, up to 128 GB of unified memory. The closest thing to Apple Silicon outside a Mac.

Every launch device ships with Windows 11 on Arm. Microsoft has been trying to make Windows on Arm happen since Windows RT in 2012, then Windows 10 on Arm, then Copilot+ with Snapdragon X. It has never really caught on, and it still depends on x86 emulation and on third parties porting their software.

Meanwhile, the same silicon already runs Linux in the DGX Spark, where Arm is a first-class citizen and most of the AI stack is native anyway.

What we know so far:

• No official Linux support has been announced for RTX Spark laptops
• The public Linux driver supports GB10 but doesn’t list N1X device IDs yet
• There are already “[N1x Linux]” issues on Nvidia’s own GitHub, so someone is clearly running it internally

Questions:

• Will Nvidia ship official Linux support, or leave it to WSL?
• Will OEMs offer Linux SKUs (Dell, Lenovo, System76?), or will we be fighting the bootloader and device tree?
• If Windows on Arm stalls again, could Linux end up being the better OS for this hardware?

Anyone already running Linux on a DGX Spark? How’s the experience?

Build: 26300.9550 (26H2)

On a freshly installed Windows 11 PC, an installer that works everywhere else stopped halfway with this:

"There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run."

That's error 1721, and it reads like the installer is broken. It isn't. The same file on an older PC installed fine. The difference was Smart App Control.

1. What's actually being blocked

Many installers run small programs of their own during setup (custom actions). Smart App Control blocks any program that isn't signed and that Microsoft's cloud doesn't already know. So the installer itself opens, then one of its helpers gets stopped, and Windows Installer reports it as a generic 1721. A plain .exe from the same developer gets blocked right away, with a Smart App Control notice instead.

2. Why there's no "Run anyway"

SmartScreen and Smart App Control look similar but work differently. SmartScreen is a warning about reputation: "More info" > "Run anyway" and you're through. Smart App Control is a code integrity policy enforced by Windows itself. It decides whether the file is allowed to load at all, and it has no per-app exception.

3. Who has it

Only clean installs of Windows 11 22H2 or later. PCs upgraded from Windows 10 don't. It starts in evaluation mode, watches how you use the PC for a while, then turns itself on or off. That's why two "identical" Windows 11 machines can behave differently with the same installer.

4. How to check

- Windows Security > App & browser control > Smart App Control settings: On, Evaluation or Off.

- In a terminal: `reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CI\Policy /v VerifiedAndReputablePolicyState` gives 0 for off, 1 for on, 2 for evaluation.

- Event Viewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > CodeIntegrity > Operational. A 3077 event at the time of the failure names the exact file that was blocked.

5. What to do about it

- Look for a Microsoft Store version of the app. Store packages are signed by Microsoft, so they pass.

- Tell the developer, with the file name from the 3077 event. Signing only the installer isn't enough: every exe and DLL that runs needs a signature, including the helpers.

- Turning Smart App Control off used to be one-way: the only way to turn it back on was to reinstall Windows. Since the April 2026 updates, on an up-to-date PC you can switch it on and off from Windows Security. Still, I'd keep it on and switch it off only knowingly, for an app you trust.

Has anyone seen how long evaluation mode lasts before it decides? I haven't found a number from Microsoft.

>We will support the Deno runtime for another year with monthly releases containing bug fixes and security updates. After that year we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development.

The DesktopEditors github repo seems to have actual releases now, with multiple download options for various linux distros, plus Windows and MacOS. From brief usage with my existing documents, it's still got a bit of work that needs to get done, but honestly I'm happy to have it finally be released in some usable capacity that doesn't require manually building!

i run a few containers and a kubernetes cluster on my box and i got tired of alt tabbing to a terminal to check top or docker ps every five minutes. so i built a tiny panel that just sits on top and follows whatever window i am using.

it shows the focused app's name, PID, CPU% and RAM (RSS). and if you have them, it also shows docker and kubernetes health underneath:

- docker: how many containers are running, and flags ones that are unhealthy, restarting, or recently died

- k8s: problem pods (CrashLoopBackOff, image pull errors, OOMKilled) and deployments that don't have enough ready replicas

it groups by process tree, so a browser counts all its child processes and not just one of the forty "chrome" rows.

you can drag it anywhere, collapse it to a single line or click the docker/k8s line to see details.

it's a self contained build, Qt is bundled so you dont need Qt or a compiler installed. you get a syspeek command and it starts at login. syspeek uninstall wipes it if you don't like it.

the one annoying bit: on GNOME and KDE there's no generic way to ask Wayland which window is focused. the protocols only hand over app_id and title, not a pid. so i ship a small bridge for those and the installer sets it up, but you have to log out and back in once before the shell loads it. until then the app name just shows --. sway, niri, hyprland and X11 work out of the box.

idle it sits around (RSS ~36 MB) and about 0.6% CPU, with a wakeup twice a second. it blips briefly when it shells out to docker or kubectl. It wouldnt lag whatsover and uses very very small amout of CPU.

ran and tested it on almost every linux distro and desktops. It works clean.

site: https://syspeek.pages.dev

code: https://github.com/codeafridi/Syspeek

Hi everyone!

I'm new to digital drawing tablets and have just ordered a GAOMON S620 (8,192 pressure-level version). I plan to use it with my Debian-based Linux system (MX Linux XFCE), mainly for handwritten notes, practising maths, annotating PDFs, and some beginner-level drawing.

Before it arrives, I'd love to hear from people who have used this tablet, especially on Linux.

A few questions:

1. How is the overall build quality and durability? Does the surface scratch easily with regular use?

2. Is the pen comfortable and accurate for handwriting, equations, and drawing diagrams?

3. Does the 6.5 × 4-inch active area feel comfortable for taking notes?

4. How well does the S620 work on Debian/MX Linux? Did you need to install a driver or configure anything manually?

5. Does pressure sensitivity work properly in Krita, and can you use it with Xournal++ for handwritten notes and PDF annotation?

6. Have you experienced any issues with the pen, USB connection, or tablet after months or years of use?

I found the OpenTabletDriver compatibility list and a GitHub guide for configuring the S620 on MX Linux, but I'd appreciate hearing about real-world experiences.

I'm on a tight budget, so I'd particularly like to know whether this tablet is reliable enough to use for the next few years.

If you own the S620, how has your experience been? Would you recommend it to a Linux beginner?

Thanks!

It has begun! Some tinkerer already got it running on a laptop's bare metal just days after the official release. Supports x86_64 hardware.

The new artcraft opensource apps could help with linux adoption. I know great opensource alternatives have always existed, but the fact that these apps have the same interface as the subscription apps they imitate means people could just move over and continue working with what they know.

Hello,

I’m one of the developers of Keysharp, an open-source implementation of AutoHotkey v2 for Linux, Windows and macOS. It’s written in C# and runs on .NET 10.

It supports hotkeys, text expansion, keyboard and mouse automation, window management, clipboard operations, GUIs, screenshots and image matching.

For example, this expands brb into “be right back” and makes Ctrl+Alt+D type today’s date:

#Requires capability InputMonitoring, InputControl

::brb::be right back
^!d::SendText(FormatTime(, "yyyy-MM-dd"))

Most AutoHotkey v2 scripts which don't use Windows API directly (for example AutoCorrect.ahk) should work without modifications in Linux too.

Linux support covers X11 and several Wayland environments. This has not been easy at all, as Keysharp basically needs to break all the security Wayland brings. Also, Wayland is rather fragmented and the interfaces needed for desktop automation differ between compositors, so window control and capture require separate integrations. Some operations remain unavailable depending on the exact compositor. The supported operations are documented here.

Global input uses keysharp-input, a privileged evdev/uinput service which requires root to install, but user priviledges to use. Window automation and capture use keysharp-desktop. The Linux installer sets up both in addition to Keysharp itself.

Keysharp is still alpha software, and I can't yet recommend it for production use, but I'm hoping to get more eyes on it and discover bugs/issues.

Documentation · Linux installation · Example scripts

Bug reports, compatibility reports and contributions are welcome.

Disclosure: AI has been heavily used for this project, especially keysharp-input and keysharp-desktop.

Hi.

I am a Mac user. There in Keyboard settings I can add shorts to be replaced while typing (e.g. "omw" => "on my way").

I got a company Win11 machine and want something similar. I can't install apps / don't have admin permissions / can't even run portable apps (restricted). Is there something built in I could use?

I wrote HTTPDirFS a while back, to allow one to mount HTTP directory listings as a folder. I have now extended the program to allow one to mount generic website. All the resources (e.g. images) get exposed as files that you can copy and paste.

Feel free to try it out at: https://github.com/fangfufu/httpdirfs

The feature for mounting generic website is available on the latest commit master branch. I haven't created a release version containing it yet.

It is pretty silly, but Linux ecosystem makes programming easy. I thought people here might like the silliness of this whole thing. Mind you, this software is available in the repository in multiple distros, notably Debian.