Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser was an improvement over the initial version of Edge in many ways, including its support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. But the end of the road is coming: Microsoft has announced that Edge will end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 in mid-January of 2023, shortly after those operating systems stop getting regular security updates. From a report: Support will also end for Microsoft Edge Webview2, which can use Edge's rendering engine to embed webpages in non-Edge apps. The end-of-support date for Edge coincides with the end of security update support for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on January 10, and the end of Google Chrome support for Windows 7 and 8 in version 110. Because the underlying Chromium engine in both Chrome and Edge is open source, Microsoft could continue supporting Edge in older Windows versions if it wanted, but the company is using both end-of-support dates to justify a clean break for Edge.

Anyone remember the high-end commercial UNIX workstations from a few decades ago — like from companies like IBM, DEC, SGI, and Sun Microsystems?

Today OSnews looked back — but also explored what happens when you try to buy one today> : As x86 became ever more powerful and versatile, and with the rise of Linux as a capable UNIX replacement and the adoption of the NT-based versions of Windows, the days of the UNIX workstations were numbered. A few years into the new millennium, virtually all traditional UNIX vendors had ended production of their workstations and in some cases even their associated architectures, with a lacklustre collective effort to move over to Intel's Itanium — which didn't exactly go anywhere and is now nothing more than a sour footnote in computing history.

Approaching roughly 2010, all the UNIX workstations had disappeared.... and by now, they're all pretty much dead (save for Solaris). Users and industries moved on to x86 on the hardware side, and Linux, Windows, and in some cases, Mac OS X on the software side.... Over the past few years, I have come to learn that If you want to get into buying, using, and learning from UNIX workstations today, you'll run into various problems which can roughly be filed into three main categories: hardware availability, operating system availability, and third party software availability.
Their article details their own attempts to buy one over the years, ultimately concluding the experience "left me bitter and frustrated that so much knowledge — in the form of documentation, software, tutorials, drivers, and so on — is disappearing before our very eyes." Shortsightedness and disinterest in their own heritage by corporations, big and small, is destroying entire swaths of software, and as more years pass by, it will get ever harder to get any of these things back up and running.... As for all the third-party software — well, I'm afraid it's too late for that already. Chasing down the rightsholders is already an incredibly difficult task, and even if you do find them, they are probably not interested in helping you, and even if by some miracle they are, they most likely no longer even have the ability to generate the required licenses or release versions with the licensing ripped out. Stuff like Pro/ENGINEER and SoftWindows for UNIX are most likely gone forever....

Software is dying off at an alarming rate, and I fear there's no turning the tide of this mass extinction.
The article also wonders why companies like HPE don't just "dump some ISO files" onto an FTP server, along with patch depots and documentation. "This stuff has no commercial value, they're not losing any sales, and it will barely affect their bottom line.

It was 29 years ago today that DOOM was first released — and we're still using it! Here in 2022, the latest mod reportedly converts its demons into the zombies and creepers from Minecraft. This week Hackaday wrote about a simple emulated RISC-V processor that runs DOOM. Last month someone even got DOOM running in Notepad. And recently WebTV enthusiasts not only jerry-rigged a contemporary TV to a WebTV unit, but then actually got it to play a 1990s-era WebTV version of DOOM on their TV screen.

The last 29 years have been a long, strange trip. A hidden Doom level appeared in Microsoft Excel. A Doom video was also used to promote Windows 95. And then there was that weird Doom movie starring The Rock and Karl Urban... By 2015 Doom was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. In 2016 John Romero created a new level. Later that year a new release of Doom even featured a mod with one of the the original Doom II levels from 1994.

In 2016 we'd asked Slashdot readers to share their own favorite stories about Doom — and the best thing about that post is those 351 comments. ("I went to the door, confused why the police were banging on my door.... They said they had reports of shots being fired." )

Is anyone still playing Doom today? Share your own thoughts and memories in the comments.

And what's your own favorite story about Doom?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Following Google's beta rollout of the feature in October, passkeys are now hitting Chrome stable M108. "Passkey" is built on industry standards and backed by all the big platform vendors -- Google, Apple, Microsoft -- along with the FIDO Alliance. Google's latest blog says: "With the latest version of Chrome, we're enabling passkeys on Windows 11, macOS, and Android." The Google Password Manager on Android is ready to sync all your passkeys to the cloud, and if you can meet all the hardware requirements and find a supporting service, you can now sign-in to something with a passkey. [...]

Now that this is actually up and running on Chrome 108 and a supported OS, you should be able to see the passkey screen under the "autofill" section of the Chrome settings (or try pasting chrome://settings/passkeys into the address bar). Next up we'll need more websites and services to actually support using a passkey instead of a password to sign in. Google Account support would be a good first step -- right now you can use a passkey for two-factor authentication with Google, but you can't replace your password yet. Everyone's go-to example of passkeys is the passkeys.io demo site, which we have a walkthrough of here.

Microsoft is finally bringing a built-in screen recorder to Windows. The Verge reports: The Snipping Tool in Windows 11 will soon be updated to include screen recording, meaning Windows users won't have to rely on the Xbox Game Bar or third-party tools just to record their screens. Windows 11 testers will start getting access to the updated Snipping Tool today, and the new record option will allow you to record an entire screen or even a section that gets cropped. The update comes more than four years after Microsoft first introduced a new screenshot experience for Windows. [...] Microsoft has only just started testing this with Windows 11 testers in the Dev Channel, so it's likely some weeks or months before this Snipping Tool is released to everyone using Windows 11.

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to nudge laggards toward Windows 11 amid a migration pace that company executives would undoubtedly prefer is rather faster. From a report: The software giant is offering an option of upgrading to Windows 11 as an out of box experience to its Windows 10 22H2 installed base, the main aim being to smooth their path forward to the latest operating system. "On November 30, 2022, an out-of-band update was released to improve the Windows 10, version 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2 out-of-box experience (OOBE). It provides eligible devices with the option to upgrade to Windows 11 as part of the OOBE process. This update will be available only when an OOBE update is installed."

The update, KB5020683, applies only to Windows 10 Home and Professional versions 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 22H2. There are some pre-requisites that Microsoft has listed here before users can make the move to Windows 11. The operating system was released on October 5 last year but shifting stubborn consumers onto this software has proved challenging for top brass at Microsoft HQ in Redmond. According to Statcounter, a web analytics service that has tracking code installed on 1.5 million websites and records a page view for each, some 16.12 percent of Windows users had installed Windows 11 in November, higher than the 15.44 percent in the prior month, but likely still not close to the figures that Microsoft was hoping for.

Around 2009 Slashdot was abuzz about how over-the-air broadcasting in North America was switching to a new standard called DTV. (Fun fact: North America and South America have two entirely different broadcast TV standards — both of which are different from the DVB-T standard used in Europe/Africa/Australia.) But 2022 ends with us already talking about DTV's successor in North America: the new broadcast standard NextGen TV.

This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations, CNET points out — and it won't affect cable, satellite or streaming TV. But now even if you're not paying for a streaming TV service, another article points out, in most major American cities "an inexpensive antenna is all you'll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations" — and often with a better picture quality: NextGen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, is continuing to roll out across the U.S. It's already widely available, with stations throughout the country broadcasting in the new standard. There are many new TVs with compatible tuners plus several stand-alone tuners to add NextGen to just about any TV. As the name suggests, NextGen TV is the next generation of over-the-air broadcasts, replacing or supplementing the free HD broadcasts we've had for over two decades. NextGen not only improves on HDTV, but adds the potential for new features like free over-the-air 4K and HDR, though those aren't yet widely available.

Even so, the image quality with NextGen is likely better than what you're used to from streaming or even cable/satellite. If you already have an antenna and watch HD broadcasts, the reception you get with NextGen might be better, too.... Because of how it works, you'll likely get better reception if you're far from the TV tower.

The short version is: NextGen is free over-the-air television with potentially more channels and better image quality than older over-the-air broadcasts.
U.S. broadcast companies have also created a site at WatchNextGenTV.com showing options for purchasing a compatible new TV. That site also features a video touting NextGen TV's "brilliant colors and a sharper picture with a wider range of contrast" and its Dolby audio system (with "immersive, movie theatre-quality sound" with enhancements for voice and dialogue "so you get all of the story.") And in the video there's also examples of upcoming interactive features like on-screen quizzes, voting, and shopping, as well as the ability to select multiple camera angles or different audio tracks.

"One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits," CNet reported earlier this year, calling the data "information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like companies such as Facebook and Google use today...

"Ads specific to your viewing habits, income level and even ethnicity (presumed by your neighborhood, for example) could get slotted in by your local station.... but here's the thing: If your TV is connected to the internet, it's already tracking you. Pretty much every app, streaming service, smart TV and cable or satellite box all track your usage to a greater or lesser extent."

But on the plus side... NextGen TV is IP-based, so in practice it can be moved around your home just like any internet content can right now. For example, you connect an antenna to a tuner box inside your home, but that box is not connected to your TV at all. Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV, be it your TV, your phone, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV....

This also means it's possible we'll see mobile devices with built-in tuners, so you can watch live TV while you're out and about, like you can with Netflix and YouTube now. How willing phone companies will be to put tuners in their phones remains to be seen, however. You don't see a lot of phones that can get radio broadcasts now, even though such a thing is easy to implement.
But whatever you think — it's already here. By August NextGen TV was already reaching half of America's population, according to a press release from a U.S. broadcaster's coalition. That press release also bragged that 40% of consumers had actually heard of NextGen TV — "up 25% from last year among those in markets where it is available."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: A previously undocumented data wiper named CryWiper is masquerading as ransomware, but in reality, destroys data beyond recovery in attacks against Russian mayor's offices and courts. CryWiper was first discovered by Kaspersky this fall, where they say the malware was used in an attack against a Russian organization. [...] CryWiper is a 64-bit Windows executable named 'browserupdate.exe' written in C++, configured to abuse many WinAPI function calls. Upon execution, it creates scheduled tasks to run every five minutes on the compromised machine.

Next, it contacts a command and control server (C2) with the name of the victim's machine. The C2 responds with either a "run" or "do not run" command, determining whether the wiper will activate or stay dormant. Kaspersky reports seeing execution delays of 4 days (345,600 seconds) in some cases, likely added in the code to help confuse the victim as to what caused the infection. CryWiper will stop critical processes related to MySQL, MS SQL database servers, MS Exchange email servers, and MS Active Directory web services to free locked data for destruction.

Next, the malware deletes shadow copies on the compromised machine to prevent the easy restoration of the wiped files. CryWiper also modifies the Windows Registry to prevent RDP connections, likely to hinder intervention and incident response from remote IT specialists. Finally, the wiper will corrupt all enumerated files except for ".exe", ".dll", "lnk", ".sys", ".msi", and its own ".CRY", while also skipping System, Windows, and Boot directories to prevent rendering the computer completely unusable. After this step, CryWiper will generate ransom notes named 'README.txt,' asking for 0.5 Bitcoin (approximately $8,000) in exchange for a decrypter. Unfortunately, this is a false promise, as the corrupted data cannot be restored.

Google researchers say they have linked a Barcelona, Spain-based IT company to the sale of advanced software frameworks that exploit vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, and Windows Defender. From a report: Variston IT bills itself as a provider of tailor-made Information security solutions, including technology for embedded SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and Internet of Things integrators, custom security patches for proprietary systems, tools for data discovery, security training, and the development of secure protocols for embedded devices.

According to a report from Google's Threat Analysis Group, Variston sells another product not mentioned on its website: software frameworks that provide everything a customer needs to surreptitiously install malware on devices they want to spy on. Researchers Clement Lecigne and Benoit Sevens said the exploit frameworks were used to exploit n-day vulnerabilities, which are those that have been patched recently enough that some targets haven't yet installed them. Evidence suggests, they added, that the frameworks were also used when the vulnerabilities were zero-days. The researchers are disclosing their findings in an attempt to disrupt the market for spyware, which they said is booming and poses a threat to various groups.

Microsoft is offering Windows 11 users a preview of an update that fixes some gaming performance problems. The software maker originally warned of issues with lower than expected performance in some games earlier this month, after some Windows 11 users that had upgraded to the latest 2022 Update (22H2) noticed problems. From a report: "Some games and apps might experience lower than expected performance or stuttering on Windows 11, version 22H2," said Microsoft at the time. "Affected games and apps are inadvertently enabling GPU performance debugging features not meant to be used by consumers." While Microsoft didn't list the exact apps and games experiencing problems, the company did block the Windows 11 2022 Update for systems with affected games and recommended people not upgrade. That safeguard was removed around a week ago, and now Microsoft has issued a full fix. If you're running the Windows 11 2022 Update, you can check Windows Update and find a KB5020044 update preview that you can install.

Ars Technica reports on what happened when researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, left laptops overnight at 12 computer repair shops — and then recovered logs after receiving their repairs: The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device....

The amount of snooping may actually have been higher than recorded in the study, which was conducted from October to December 2021. In all, the researchers took the laptops to 16 shops in the greater Ontario region. Logs on devices from two of those visits weren't recoverable. Two of the repairs were performed on the spot and in the customer's presence, so the technician had no opportunity to surreptitiously view personal data. In three cases, Windows Quick Access or Recently Accessed Files had been deleted in what the researchers suspect was an attempt by the snooping technician to cover their tracks....

The vast majority of repair shops provide no privacy policy and those that do have no means of enforcing them. Even worse, repair technicians required a customer to surrender their login password even when it wasn't necessary for the repair needed. These findings came from a separate part of the study, in which the researchers brought an Asus UX330U laptop into 11 shops for a battery replacement. This repair doesn't require a technician to log in to the machine, since the removal of the back of the device and access to the device BIOS (for checking battery health) is all that's needed. Despite this, all but one of the repair service providers asked for the credentials to the device OS anyway.

When the customer asked if they could get the repair without providing the password, three refused to take the device without it, four agreed to take it but warned they wouldn't be able to verify their work or be responsible for it, one asked the customer to remove the password, and one said they would reset the device if it was required.

Somewhere in Silicon Valley is a man "standing up to internet giants Comcast and AT&T," reports the Mercury News. (Alternate URL here.)

"Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead " Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.

Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. "You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway," Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.

So the self-described "town rebel" jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.

That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.
It helped that his home "also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection," the article points out.

But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled "the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses."

Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!

South Korea's capital launched its first self-driving bus route on Friday, part of an experiment which engineers said aims to make people feel more comfortable with driverless vehicles on the roads. From a report: The new vehicle does not look like a regular bus and has rounded edges along with large windows that make it appear more like a toy than a technological breakthrough. This design is intentional, said Jeong Seong-gyun, head of autonomous driving at 42dot, the start-up responsible for the self-driving technology that is now owned by auto giant Hyundai. "This is the future," he told AFP, adding that the bus required "a considerable new type of design." The bus looks a bit "like Lego" and is made of composite parts to help keep costs down and make it easy to replicate, he said. It uses cameras and lasers to navigate the way instead of expensive sensors, Seong-gyun added. The company's goal was to make the technology low-cost, safe and easily transferable to many types of vehicle in the future, for example delivery trucks.

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., whose innovative work in computer design and software engineering helped shape the field of computer science, died on Thursday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his son, Roger, who said Dr. Brooks had been in declining health since having a stroke two years ago. The New York Times reports: Dr. Brooks had a wide-ranging career that included creating the computer science department at the University of North Carolina and leading influential research in computer graphics and virtual reality. But he is best known for being one of the technical leaders of IBM's 360 computer project in the 1960s. At a time when smaller rivals like Burroughs, Univac and NCR were making inroads, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking. Fortune magazine, in an article with the headline "IBM's $5,000,000,000 Gamble," described it as a "bet the company" venture.

Until the 360, each model of computer had its own bespoke hardware design. That required engineers to overhaul their software programs to run on every new machine that was introduced. But IBM promised to eliminate that costly, repetitive labor with an approach championed by Dr. Brooks, a young engineering star at the company, and a few colleagues. In April 1964, IBM announced the 360 as a family of six compatible computers. Programs written for one 360 model could run on the others, without the need to rewrite software, as customers moved from smaller to larger computers. The shared design across several machines was described in a paper, written by Dr. Brooks and his colleagues Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, titled "Architecture of the IBM System/360." "That was a breakthrough in computer architecture that Fred Brooks led," Richard Sites, a computer designer who studied under Dr. Brooks, said in an interview.

But there was a problem. The software needed to deliver on the IBM promise of compatibility across machines and the capability to run multiple programs at once was not ready, as it proved to be a far more daunting challenge than anticipated. Operating system software is often described as the command and control system of a computer. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft's Windows, Apple's iOS and Google's Android. At the time IBM made the 360 announcement, Dr. Brooks was just 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to return to North Carolina, where he grew up, and start a computer science department at Chapel Hill. But Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, asked him to stay on for another year to tackle the company's software troubles. Dr. Brooks agreed, and eventually the OS/360 problems were sorted out. The 360 project turned out to be an enormous success, cementing the company's dominance of the computer market into the 1980s. "Fred Brooks was a brilliant scientist who changed computing," Arvind Krishna, IBM's chief executive and himself a computer scientist, said in a statement. "We are indebted to him for his pioneering contributions to the industry."

Dr. Brooks published a book in 1975 titled, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering." It was "a quirky classic, selling briskly year after year and routinely cited as gospel by computer scientists," reports the Times.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for running GNU/Linux environments on Windows 10 and Windows 11 has reached version 1.0.0 and is now generally available. Microsoft has been building WSL, including its own custom Linux kernel, for several years now. At first, WSL and WSL2 were an optional component within Windows, but last October Microsoft made the preview WSL available in the Microsoft Store as a separate app. The Store version could deliver users -- mostly developers and IT pros -- faster updates and features independently of updates to Windows.

As well as WSL shedding the "preview" label, Microsoft is making the WSL app from the Store the default for new users. As Microsoft noted last October at the release of Windows 11, the long term plan was to move WSL users to the Store version. However, Windows 11 still supported the "inbox version" of WSL while it continued developing the Store version. With this release, Microsoft is backporting WSL functionality to Windows 10 and 11 to make the Store version of WSL the default experience. The latest backport is available to "seekers" who click "Check for Updates" in Windows Settings, but in mid-December it will be pushed automatically to devices. The updates are available for Windows 10 version 21H1, 21H2, or 22H2, or on Windows 11 21H2 with all of the November updates applied.

Microsoft detailed a number of changes to commands now that the Store version of WSL is the default version, noting "wsl.exe --install will now automatically install the Store version of WSL, and will no longer enable the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" optional component, or install the WSL kernel or WSLg MSI packages as they are no longer needed." The virtual machine platform optional component will still be enabled, and by default Ubuntu will still be installed. One of the main new additions to WSL 1.0 is that users can opt in to support for systemd, the at-one-point maligned Linux system and service manager, which runs by default in several Linux distros, including Ubuntu and Debian. Also, Windows 10 users can use Linux GUI apps, a capability that was previously exclusive to Windows 11 users.

Longtime Slashdot reader BenFenner writes: While Chromium recently abandoned the JPEG-XL format (to much discussion on the feature request), it seems the Pale Moon browser quietly became the first to release support for the much-awaited image format. For those unfamiliar with Pale Moon, it is a Goanna-based web browser available for Windows, Linux and Android, focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Pale Moon 31.4.0 also adds support for MacOS 13 "Ventura" and addresses a number of performance- and security-related issues. A full list of the changes/fixes are available in the release notes.

Support for JPEG-XL was confirmed on GitHub.

There are ongoing issues apparently affecting the iCloud for Windows app, particularly in regards to photo and video storage. According to a number of online complaints from users, iCloud for Windows is corrupting certain videos. There are also reports of a more worrying problem: photos from strangers popping up in people's iCloud Photo library. 9to5Mac reports: MacRumors rounded up some of these complaints via complaints posted to their forums. According to an affected user, videos taken with the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro models aren't being properly synced with iCloud for Windows. When certain videos are recorded and the synced with iCloud for Windows, they then turn "black with scan lines, rendering the videos unwatchable."

While that problem is bad enough, some other users say they are seeing photos and even videos they do not recognize in their photo libraries. The speculation here is that these photos or videos could be from other people's iCloud libraries, though nothing has been confirmed yet. [...] These problems appear to be affecting the dedicated iCloud for Windows app itself, not the recently-launched iCloud Photos integration in Windows 11. The culprit seems to be the handoff of certain file types between the iPhone and iCloud rendering on Windows. The problem certainly appears to be a server-side issue on Apple's side, rather than something on Microsoft's side.

Mark Hachman, writing for PCWorld: Windows 8 stunk. It might have helped cost chief executive Steve Ballmer his job. Windows 8.1 was a bit better -- but if you love it, you have only a month or so left to enjoy it. Microsoft will kill off Windows 8.1 support on January 10, 2023. There's no out: Microsoft will not be offering an extended support package for Windows 8.1. At that point, you'll have a choice: buy a new Windows PC, or officially pay to upgrade to either Windows 10 or Windows 11. What does the end of support mean? Until January 10, Microsoft will offer security patches and other fixes for any security issues that crop up. Afterwards, you're on your own. If any exploit or malware surfaces, you'll have to depend on any antivirus software you have running -- Microsoft won't be issuing any more patches after Jan. 10, and your PC will absolutely be at risk.

Michael Larabel, reporting for Phoronix: This summer AMD announced the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer "RRA" as part of their developer software suite for helping to profile ray-tracing performance/issues on Windows and Linux with both Direct3D 12 and the Vulkan API. Initially the RRA 1.0 release was binary-only but now AMD has made good on their "GPUOpen" approach and made it open-source.

As noted back in my original article from July on the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer release: "Radeon Raytracing Analyzer is hosted on GitHub but the only content in the actual Git repository right now is documentation, so it would appear that at least initially this is a closed-source package though some documentation also says it's MIT licensed."

Last week that was cleared up with the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer source code going public. There are build instructions for compiling the RRA 1.0 sources on both Microsoft Windows and Linux while the Linux instructions are tailoring to Ubuntu use. Building the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer depends upon the Qt 5.15 toolkit.

The Browser Company's Chromium-based Arc browser "isn't perfect, and it takes some getting used to," writes the Verge. "But it's full of big new ideas about how we should interact with the web — and it's right about most of them." Arc wants to be the web's operating system. So it built a bunch of tools that make it easier to control apps and content, turned tabs and bookmarks into something more like an app launcher, and built a few platform-wide apps of its own. The app is much more opinionated and much more complicated than your average browser with its row of same-y tabs at the top of the screen. Another way to think about it is that Arc treats the web the way TikTok treats video: not as a fixed thing for you to consume but as a set of endlessly remixable components for you to pull apart, play with, and use to create something of your own. Want something to look better or have an idea for what to do with it? Go for it.

This is a fun moment in the web browser industry. After more than a decade of total Chrome dominance, users are looking elsewhere for more features, more privacy, and better UI. Vivaldi has some really clever features; SigmaOS is also betting on browsers as operating systems; Brave has smart ideas about privacy; even Edge and Firefox are getting better fast. But Arc is the biggest swing of them all: an attempt to not just improve the browser but reinvent it entirely....

Right now, Arc is only available for the Mac, but the company has said it's also working on Windows and mobile versions, both due next year. It's still in a waitlisted beta and is still very much a beta app, with some basic features missing, other features still in flux, and a few deeply annoying bugs. But Arc's big ideas are the right ones. I don't know if The Browser Company is poised to take on giants and win the next generation of the browser wars, but I'd bet that the future of browsers looks a lot like Arc....

In a way, Arc is more like ChromeOS than Chrome. It tries to expand the browser to become the only app you need because, in a world where all your apps are web apps and all your files are URLs, who really needs more than a browser?
The article describes Arc as a power user tool with vertical sidebar combining bookmarks, tabs, and apps. (And sets of these can apparently be combined into different "spaces".) These are enhanced with a hefty set of keyboard shortcuts (including tab searching), along with built-in media controls for Twitch/Spotify/Google Meet (as well as a picture-in-picture mode).
BR. Arc even has a shareable, collaborative whiteboard app "Easel". And it also offers powerful features like the ability to rewrite how your browser displays any site's CSS. ("I have one that removes the Trending sidebar from Twitter and another that cleans up my Gmail page.")