Google’s Chrome browser is getting a couple of new features, both of them extremely welcome and wildly overdue. The first is a reading mode, which does what it already does in most other browsers: strip out a lot of website cruft to make pages easier to read. Reading mode is good, you should use it, a lot of websites are bad. The second feature is the big one: vertical tabs. Instead of having all your tabs in a row across the top of your browser, you can now right-click on the tab bar and select “Show Tabs Vertically” to have them appear in a sidebar instead.

Vertical tabs are hardly a new idea about browsers — even the original Chrome team tested them, before deciding that putting the tabs at the top made each one feel more like an app. Glen Murphy, the team’s original designer, said in an interview last year that he saw tabs as “the equivalent of a window’s titlebar — the highest level element that could be detached, grouped, and would contain and separate each page and toolbar from each other.” Chrome stuck with that logic, and that design, for too many years afterward.

After all this time, Chrome actually executed the idea pretty well. When you switch to vertical tabs, the Chrome address bar moves up to the top row of the app, which makes the interface take up substantially less space than before. If you’re a real minimalist, you can shrink the sidebar to show only website favicons, and suddenly Chrome’s chrome is almost entirely out of the way.

(I say almost because Google could have gone further here. Over the last few years, browser after browser has essentially copied the design that The Browser Company built into Arc, which has a left sidebar that also includes bookmarks and the address bar. It looks better, and frees up even more space. Google being Google, though, there’s no chance Chrome is ever going to take the search bar — a portal to its unbelievably lucrative search engine, a product integration so powerful it became a central part of the search antitrust trial — out of focus.)

It took forever, but Chrome does vertical tabs pretty well.

Image: Google

 

All of this is to say: Vertical tabs are better and you should use them. It’s a simple matter of screen real estate. Virtually every modern computer display is widescreen, which is to say it’s wider than it is tall. Websites and web apps, meanwhile, are practically always vertical experiences. Whether you’re on a 13-inch laptop or a 32-inch behemoth of a monitor, the space from top to bottom of your computer is more precious than the space from left to right.

Moving your tabs to the side also makes them much easier to manage. If I load 12 tabs on my 13-inch MacBook Air, I can see about three letters of each tab’s title; if I load 25 all I can see is the favicons. With vertical tabs on, though, I can see the full title of 23 tabs at a time, with the other two just a tiny scroll away. The more I’ve embraced vertical tabs, the more I’ve appreciated how much easier this makes it to find the tab I’m looking for, and to quickly close the ones I don’t want anymore. I don’t have to wonder which of those 12 tabs with a Google Docs icon is actually the doc I need, because all the names are right there.

Vertical tabs also make it easier to work with tab groups, another power-user favorite. You can now maintain a few groups, each of which expands and contracts in place without completely usurping all the space you need for your more ephemeral tabs.

The other reason to switch to vertical tabs is that it makes your browser work more like the other software you use. For better or worse, it seems most apps have arrived at the idea that there’s a sidebar on the left for navigating your stuff, and then a main window for your content. There are a few holdouts, most notably Microsoft’s Office suite and Google Workspace, both of which still favor a horizontal toolbar at the top of the page, but I’m not sure I’d call either of those paragons of modern software design. Most modern software, from Notion to Slack to Canva, has long since embraced the sidebar. Since our browsers now are primarily just windows through which we access web apps, it only makes sense for them to look and work the same way.

The good news here is, you don’t have to take my word for it. Switching browsers is hard, and maybe you don’t want to do it just for vertical tabs. But update Chrome, right-click the tab bar, and just see what happens when you select Show Tabs Vertically. I bet you’ll never go back.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:32 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Recently released Firefox 149 has received a bug-fixing update with a bunch of patches to resolve various bugs. With today's update, which is now available for everyone to download, Mozilla fixed incorrect page printing, generic error messages instead of specific error codes, crashes when using two-factor authentication, and more.

Here is the changelog:

• Fixed an issue where certain parts of web pages, such as drop-down menus and specific styles, did not appear correctly when printing.
• Fixed an issue where some website error pages displayed generic connection messages instead of the specific error code and description provided by the server.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when using certain security keys or WebAuthn features for two-factor authentication.
• Fixed an issue on Linux where the browser toolbar could become unresponsive to mouse clicks after dragging a tab when using Wayland.
• Fixed a layout issue where text inside certain graphics (SVG) appeared shifted or misaligned from its intended position.
• Fixed an issue where the "Send to device" option failed to work when used from the Open Tabs section in Firefox View.

For enterprise users, Firefox 149.0.2 brings the following:

• Introduced a new enterprise policy that allows administrators to directly manage and control AI-related features within Firefox.

• Fixed an issue where enterprise policies for the browser homepage and start page were not being applied correctly.

• Introduced a new enterprise policy that allows administrators to prevent the built-in VPN and IP protection features from being available to users.

   

Finally, Firefox 149.0.2 fixes five high-severity vulnerabilities. You can find them here.

You can download the browser from the official website, the Microsoft Store (Windows 10 and 11), or Neowin's Software page. Full release notes are available here.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:30 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Recently Microsoft promised some big performance improvements that are in store for Windows 11 as part of its ongoing rework effort. This week, March Rogers, Partner Director of Design at the company, shared progress on how far Microsoft has come in this journey of redesigning Windows 11, starting with the Settings app. On his official X handle he gave a list of such things that the company is currently testing on its Insider channels and teased the upcoming April update that will land them for all users.

Rogers wrote: "We're really focusing on design craft in Windows at the moment. There is still lots to do but this is the kind of work I love seeing ship: Settings pages redesigned for clarity, account dialogs updated for dark mode, Narrator working with Copilot on all devices... pen settings cleaned up, voice typing in File Explorer rename. Nothing fancy just lots of little details that help Windows feel more polished and coherent. Coming in the April update."

As expected, Director Rogers also confirmed that Control Panel, which has been a very useful native Windows component for a long, long time, will become redundant soon as Microsoft will eventually be "migrating all the old control panel controls into the modern Settings apps." However it is being done "carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices & drivers" that must not break.

This is part of Microsoft's effort to go for a "100% native" design for Windows applications as recently Rudy Huyn had confirmed that there will be no Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) going forward. He has been busy assembling a team of developers who will make Windows apps "great" again.

On the same thread, March Rogers further added that File Explorer is going to see big improvements too in "performance, reliability, UX glitches and search, in the next few months," and the Start menu is also getting the same treatment which will bring "performance and reliability improvements incrementally over the next few months to improve Start, Search and quick settings load times."

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:29 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

One point in favor of the sprawling Linux ecosystem is its broad hardware support—the kernel officially supports everything from ’90s-era PC hardware to Arm-based Apple Silicon chips, thanks to decades of combined effort from hardware manufacturers and motivated community members.

But nothing can last forever, and for a few years now, Linux maintainers (including Linus Torvalds) have been pushing to drop kernel support for Intel’s 80486 processor. This chip was originally introduced in 1989, was replaced by the first Intel Pentium in 1993, and was fully discontinued in 2007. Code commits suggest that Linux kernel version 7.1 will be the first to follow through, making it impossible to build a version of the kernel that will support the 486; Phoronix says that additional kernel changes to remove 486-related code will follow in subsequent kernel versions.

Although these chips haven’t changed in decades, maintaining support for them in modern software isn’t free.

“In the x86 architecture we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very, very few people are using with modern kernels,” writes Linux kernel contributor Ingo Molnar in his initial patch removing 486 support from the kernel. “This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things.”

This echoes comments from Linus Torvalds in 2022, suggesting there was “zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort” on 486-related problems. The removal of 486 support would also likely affect a handful of 486-compatible chips from other companies, including the Cyrix 5×86 and the Am5x86 from AMD. Molnar was also a driving force the last time Linux dropped support for an older Intel chip—support for the 80386 processor family was removed in kernel version 3.8 back in early 2013.

“Unfortunately there’s a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won’t be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore,” Molnar wrote. “Sniff.”

A tree falling in a forest

The practical impact of the end of 486 support will be negligible; the number of modern Linux distributions that use the kernel’s 486 support is negligible.

Many of the consumer-focused Linux distros have more Windows-like minimum system requirements, an acknowledgment of how CPU and RAM-intensive modern web browsers and browser-based apps have become; Ubuntu raised its minimum RAM requirement from 4GB to 6GB for the 26.04 LTS release. Even lightweight distros like Xubuntu or AntiX recommend 512MB to 1GB of RAM, amounts far in excess of what any 486-based PC ever shipped with (or could reasonably work with, using actual hardware).

One of the few actively maintained distros that explicitly mentions 486 support is Tiny Core Linux (and its GUI-less counterpart, Micro Core Linux). These OSes can run on a 486DX chip as long as it’s paired with at least 48MB or 28MB of RAM, respectively, though a Pentium 2 with at least 128MB of RAM is the recommended configuration. But even on the Tiny Core forums, few users are mourning the loss of 486 support.

“I get the nostalgia, like classic cars, but a car you’ve spent a year’s worth of weekends fixing up isn’t a daily driver,” writes user andyj. “Some of the extensions I maintain, like rsyslog and mariadb, require that the CPU be set to i586 as they will no longer compile for i486. The end is already here.”

Those still using a 486 for one reason or another will still be able to run older Linux kernels and vintage operating systems—running old software without emulation or virtualization is one of the few reasons to keep booting up hardware this old. If you demand an actively maintained OS, you still have options, though—the FreeDOS project isn’t Linux, but it does still run on PCs going all the way back to the original IBM Personal Computer and its 16-bit Intel 8088.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 8 April 2026 at 5:28 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

A new version of PeaZip, version 11.0, has landed, bringing speed improvements for browsing large archives, a new batch testing function for archives, a handy password strength checker, and a number of drag and drop enhancements.

Starting with the file manager, the developers added a "Batch test archives" function. You can find this in the Test dropdown menu, and it lets you verify multiple archives at once without interruption, except for password prompts. The results, success or failure, get reported right in the CRC column of the file manager.

The GTK2 build now enables its virtual mode by default when a directory contains over 16,000 items, which helps manage system resources better. You can now drop items directly onto the breadcrumb navigation bar or the tab bar to extract, copy, or move them. Another change is that the internal "Copy to" and "Move to" operations no longer switch your current directory.

A small UI revamp includes alternative icon rendering styles, with "Native", "Sharp", and "Soft" options to help the application's look blend better on different systems. Finally, the built-in password manager got a new UI and a function to rate your password's entropy, which also appears in the main password prompt.

Speed on large archives has been improved quite a bit. The application's browser optimization levels were tweaked to offer more consistent performance across different archive types. The archive pre-parsing step is now up to 87% faster on archives where the table of contents is not ordered by name. For massive archives containing over one hundred thousand items, the improvement is even more dramatic, with a reduction in processing time of up to 94%. The archive's treeview rendering is also 30% faster than before, according to the changelog. Here's a list of bug fixes this release brings:

• Fixed auto ask password for encrypted ARC files
• Fixed inconsistencies of icons for Bookmarks, Session history, and Tabs
• Fixed preserve archive breadcrumb on forced refresh events
• Fixed translation of special folders names in Bookmarks
• Prevented starting multiple "auto open tar" events in compressed tar.* archives, unless the archive is closed and reopened.

PeaZip was launched nearly 20 years ago and over the years has grown into a very capable archive and file manager. It operates as a graphical frontend for numerous open source archiving technologies, including 7-Zip/p7zip, FreeArc, PAQ/ZPAQ, and its native PEA format. This allows it to extract over 200 archive formats and write to popular ones like 7Z, ZIP, TAR, and Zstd.

Its main advantage over the likes of 7-Zip and WinRAR is that it operates as a full-featured file manager, complete with a modern interface, breadcrumb navigation, bookmarking, a duplicate file finder, an integrated image thumbnail viewer, and customizable UI themes. PeaZip is open source and available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 7 April 2026 at 5:37 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

KDE 4.0 was released in 2008 with the "Oxygen" theme that arguably defined the "classic" KDE look. It featured glassy transparencies, glossy buttons, and rich, detailed icons. Another theme, "Air," was released about a year later in 2009, bringing a lighter alternative that users felt was the perfect light theme while Oxygen served as the dark counterpart.

But the release of KDE Plasma 6 (in early 2024) marked the beginning of the end for these looks. Air was removed from libplasma, the core library, before the official launch. Its older sibling, Oxygen, managed to survive slightly longer but was eventually dropped as a default, pre-installed Plasma style in Plasma 6.2 (released in October 2024).

As David Edmundson (a prominent KDE developer) pointed out, the reason Oxygen and Air were removed was that shipping a theme as a first-party component came with a lot of technical debt and a "huge maintenance burden."

Now, there's a new community-led effort to restore both themes, aiming to get them ready in time for KDE's 30th anniversary. KDE contributor, Filip Fila, recently published an update on the restoration project. The work addresses long-standing visual glitches on Wayland when display scaling is enabled and brings back Oxygen-themed highlights in the Dolphin file manager.

This project has support from other KDE developers like Akseli Lahtinen and even Nuno Pinheiro, the original lead designer of the Oxygen Project. The team fixed some of the worst bugs, like pixelated window buttons and incorrect shadow backgrounds when running on Wayland with scaling enabled. These fixes are scheduled to land tomorrow with Plasma 6.6.4.

Before this work, the Oxygen theme was in a really bad shape. Its color scheme was just wrong, which resulted in unreadable text in some widgets. The panel had absolutely no concept of orientation, so if you used a vertical panel, you got a completely wrong and overstretched glow line. The developers completely reworked the panel to respect orientation and even added support for margin separators.

A new switch SVG was also added:

Other visual and functional issues have been addressed, including correcting the System Monitor widget's unreadable text caused by the wrong color scheme and adding a minimized state graphic to the taskbar so users can distinguish minimized and pinned windows.

Air, on the other hand, was in a more usable state but was not "airy" enough. The main problem was a lack of transparency. The team did a substantial rework of the widget background SVG to restore the classic transparency levels, now enhanced with a modern blur effect, and Developer Marco Martin patched a rendering flaw where the blur effect caused ugly smudging around widget corners.

Air and Oxygen are slated to return as restored, optional packages in KDE Plasma 6.7. But you can try it out now by downloading the themes and placing the unzipped folders in .local/share/plasma/desktoptheme. (Download link for Air | Download link for Oxygen)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 7 April 2026 at 5:34 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Regular Ubuntu users may have heard about a service Canonical offers called Ubuntu Pro. It has been around for quite a while now and extends the updates on Long-Term Support releases from the standard five years, to a massive ten years. With the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Canonical is making it easier to enable Ubuntu Pro by including it in Ubuntu's Welcome tool.

Following a successful installation, users will be presented with the Welcome tool which automatically pops up after the first time they log in. In the new version of Ubuntu, users will get two options during the setup flow to “Enable Ubuntu Pro” or “Skip for now”.

Ubuntu Pro is free for personal users on up to five computers (you can remove machines you no longer use to free up space) and for businesses it is available from $25 per machine per year.

If you decide to skip opting in to Ubuntu Pro during setup, OMG! Ubuntu notes that you can enable the feature via the Security Center app. If you do enable it during setup, you’ll be given a code to input on your Ubuntu One account to get your computer enrolled on Ubuntu Pro. There is also an option to add tokens manually, which might be helpful for enterprise customers who get a token from their team or account manager.

Ubuntu 26.04 is due for release on April 23 and will get standard support until 2031. Honestly, for most people, this is all you need, it is already a very long time, and in that time, two more LTS releases will be published by Canonical and you’ll probably want to upgrade to them rather than stick on 26.04 for a decade. However, if you do want to stick with it for a decade, it’s even easier to do so now.

Source: OMG! Ubuntu

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:17 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Despite ups and downs over the course of the Linux 7.0 development cycle, founder Linus Torvalds has confirmed that the seventh release candidate (RC7) contained no big surprises this week, meaning we are on course for the final release next week. There were concerns during earlier phases of the cycle because they were coming in larger than normal, and that can spell trouble in the form of delays.

In his announcement on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), Torvalds said that while there were no big surprises this week, RC7 did continue the trend of being somewhat larger than usual, but noted that nothing really stands out or looks worrisome.

It is suspected that this series has seen a larger number of patches because of the disruption over Christmas which could have caused new features to be committed with Linux 7.0 rather than Linux 6.19. It was also suggested last week by Torvalds that the larger patches could be to do with the use of AI coding tools.

This week, half of the patch was made up by drivers for GPU, Networking, USB, and Sound; all of which looked “very normal.” The rest of the patch was made up by Core Networking, Kernel fixes, Filesystems, Selftests, Arch fixes, documentation, and Cryptography. All these looked normal too.

Torvalds topped off the post by saying the stable release will be out by next week, but asked testers to keep testing.

Once Linux 7.0 is released, it will be up to distribution maintainers to roll it out to their users. Cutting edge distros such as Fedora and Arch will deliver it to users relatively quickly, but Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions shouldn’t expect it until their next major operating system release.

Unlike Windows which delivers individual drivers for your hardware, Linux bakes hardware support into the kernel. Each new kernel release brings with it support for newer hardware, so if you’ve tried Linux and one of your components didn’t work as expected, it could do after this update.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:16 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

If you have ever installed Windows, especially without official means, you are probably familiar with Rufus or at least must have heard of it. Simiar to Rufus, Ventoy is also an open-source utility designed to simplify the creation of bootable media. With it users can copy ISO, WIM, IMG, or other supported image files onto the device and boot them via the utility's built-in menu.

The tool supports a wide range of platforms, both BIOS and UEFI systems, and works with many operating systems, from Windows to major Linux distributions. It also allows multiple images on a single drive, making it useful for testing, recovery, or installation purposes. The app just received its latest update today and it is a significant one since it marks its sixth anniversary update. The author of the utility had launched the first version back in April of 2020.

Despite being a milestone release, the new update primarily focuses on stability rather than any major feature additions. According to the official release notes, the new software resolves installtion issues with immutable Linux distros and improves handling of boot processes in UEFI environments. The update patches problems affecting certain distributions where the boot menu either failed to load or resulted in kernel errors during initialization. It also includes some code optimizations and bug fixes that improve overall reliability when dealing with some ISO files. The previous release already fixed a Windows boot issue in F2 "browse" mode so that is also included with this update.

For anyone wondering, immutable Linux distros are systems where the core operating system files are read-only, preventing unintended or malicious changes. Hence, updates are delivered atomically without being fragmented. Examples include Fedora Silverblue and openSUSE MicroOS which use this model to improve stability and security. In such cases, apps are typically installed via containers or package layers.

The full changelog of the 6th Anniversary Version 1.1.11 update is given below:

• Fix the display issue when UEFI booting Windows/WinPE ISO.
• Add VT_WINDOWS_DISK_NONVTOY_CLOSEST_XXX, VT_LINUX_DISK_NONVTOY_CLOSEST_XXX options in AutoInstall plugin.
• Improvement for Ventoy2Disk.sh
• Improvement for porteus-hook.sh
• Improvement for booting T2SDE.
• Add support for KylinSecOS

You can download it from this page on the official Ventoy GitHub repo.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 12:55 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Microsoft made a big deal about the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) when it first unveiled Copilot+ PCs in 2024. The specialized piece of hardware is key to running AI tasks locally with more efficiency, and it has now spread from Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips to the latest Intel and AMD processors.

Although the rise of the NPU has largely been associated with Copilot+ AI tools in Windows 11, including Cocreator, Live Captions, Windows Studio Effects, and Recall, it's also being put to work by a growing number of third-party apps

If your PC includes an NPU, and there's a good chance that it does in 2026, these apps are some of the best that actually make use of the specialized hardware.

1. Cephable — AI-assisted alternative inputs on PC

It can be configured to control apps and automate tasks, and it works on Windows, MacOS/iOS, and Android.

Your PC's NPU comes into play due to Cephable's on-device privacy stance. It keeps sensitive video and voice data out of the cloud, with the NPU providing a more efficient way to power the effects.

Cephable was originally designed to enhance accessibility for people with disabilities, but it has since been adopted by a much wider range of users who want to reduce screen time and improve productivity.

Free plans are available if you want to give Cephable a try, and quotes are available for enterprise and education scenarios.

2. Adobe Photoshop — AI-assisted photo editing

With an NPU in your PC, Photoshop tools like subject selection, background removal, denoising, upscaling, and masking happen faster and more efficiently.

Not only does this leave the CPU and GPU open for other tasks, but it also reduces battery draw and heat, both of which are especially important when you're editing photos on a laptop.

You can give Photoshop a try for free, but otherwise it will cost about $23 per month.

3. Norton — AI-assisted deepfake and scam protection

Microsoft has announced that from next month, files deleted from your OneDrive cloud will no longer appear in the local Recycle Bin or Trash. To recover a file, you will now need to grab it from the OneDrive or SharePoint web recycle bin. This change won’t affect local deletes.

The Redmond giant said that it is making this change to improve the OneDrive sync performance and make file recovery more predictable. After the change, when a file is available locally and is deleted from the cloud interface, it will no longer appear in the Recycle Bin on Windows or the Trash on macOS; it will just be gone from the local system.

Sync performance for users with large file libraries will improve as a result. Delete operations will be faster, and restores will be simpler and more predictable with a single authoritative copy in the appropriate web recycle bin (via OneDrive or SharePoint).

This change will begin rolling out to Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants in early May, with a complete rollout expected by late May. It will affect all OneDrive users on Windows and macOS, and admins cannot opt out.

While admins don’t need to take action for this change to take effect, Microsoft does recommend they inform users that cloud-deleted locally available files must be restored from the web recycle bin on OneDrive or SharePoint, not the local Recycle Bin or Trash. If you have any internal documentation referencing local recovery for cloud-deleted files, it is recommended that you update this, too.

You can learn more about this major change by visiting the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and reading the contents of Message ID MC1269861.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:59 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

The KDE team recently released a new issue of their "This Week In Plasma" update, outlining changes to the KDE ecosystem.

Starting with Plasma 6.7, developers have added support for the experimental xx-fractional-scale-v2 Wayland protocol. This protocol addresses annoying visual glitches by communicating screen coordinates using unscaled physical pixels instead of the older, less precise integer-based logical coordinate space. The change should eliminate small gaps between windows and panels on high-DPI monitors.

Here's what resizing a window looks like under the old protocol:

And here's what it looks like under the new one:

Plasma 6.7 will also ship with fixes for configuring OpenConnect VPNs. The first fix tackles a long-standing issue from 2017 where the network manager would repeatedly ask for a password even when instructed to save it, and the second fix corrects a misleading German translation for "machine private key" that caused confusion during setup.

Moving on to UI improvements, the Plasma Login Manager now correctly inherits keyboard layouts from your system settings. Previously, users who set up custom keyboard layouts found they were not available on the login screen, with no direct way to add them. In other changes, developers simplified the UI for the Clipboard widget's QR code page after they moved the copy button into the header instead of leaving it on its own row.

In Plasma 6.6.4, the team fixed a number of bugs. The developers hardened Plasma against crashes caused by broken widgets and resolved a problem where the KDED background service could die with a Wayland protocol error when the screen resolution was changed. An issue that garbled Markdown-formatted text when the on-screen keyboard was enabled has also been corrected.

Here is the rest of the bug fixes:

• The System Settings Plasma Style page could crash on distributions that ship Qt 6.11 with asserts enabled.
• Usage graphs for certain NVIDIA GPUs were broken in System Monitor.
• Editing widget popups in edit mode did not work with a touchscreen.
• KWin now better handles XWayland applications that were sized incorrectly on systems with bad configuration files.

Plasma 6.6.4 is scheduled to land next Tuesday.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 6 April 2026 at 6:57 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Microsoft is expected to begin rolling out the April 2026 Security Update for Windows 11 on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, and in the fourth month of the year, the company is making new features, improvements, and security fixes available.

In this cumulative update, the company is introducing changes to the Smart App Control so you don't have to reinstall the operating system to use it. Windows Narrator now brings image description to AI as well as to non-AI devices. You'll notice various design changes in the Settings app. File Explorer is getting a few improvements, and there's new refresh rate support on Windows 11.

In this guide, I'll highlight the most significant changes in the April 2026 Security Update for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2, since both are identical.

Windows 11's new features arriving in April

The company uses the Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) technology to roll out new improvements gradually, so it may take some time before you see them.

1. Smart App Control behavior changes

Smart App Control (SAC) has now been updated to no longer require an operating system reinstallation to manage it.

The feature is available through the Windows Security app, and it locks the system down, allowing only trusted apps to run in the operating system to prevent unwanted behavior from untrusted apps.

Originally, Smart App Control was available for new installations, and it required completing the installation to turn it off. However, this is changing with the release of the April 2026 Security Update.

When the Windows Insider Program turned 9, I published an article about all the things that Microsoft needs to fix to bring back the lost enthusiasm. One of those things is Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR), a lottery system that makes it nearly impossible to test everything that Microsoft shipped in a single build. Usually, enthusiasts bypass CFR with apps like ViVeTool, but the problem is that you need dedicated IDs, and the tool itself is not very user-friendly. The good news is that it looks like Microsoft is finally fixing that.

As part of its recent commitment to fix Windows 11 and its pain points, Microsoft promised to make adjustments to the Windows Insider program, particularly to make it easier to access new features. While we wait for those improvements to materialize in new builds (today's releases are slim on new features), enthusiasts discovered that Microsoft is preparing a dedicated section for experimental, in-development features in Windows 11.

@phantomofearth published on X their findings. The new section is currently hidden in build 26300.8155, and it is called "Feature Flags." Inside it, you will find a list of available features and those that are no longer available (rollout has been completed, removed, configured to the default state, and more). There is also a warning that messing with in-development features may cause instabilities or performance issues. Here is what it looks like:

Microsoft has not announced the "Feature Flags" section, so official details remain unknown yet. However, it would be great to see it implemented in public builds so that users can easily enable or disable specific features they are excited about without relying on a rollout lottery. With other long-anticipated features coming soon to Windows 11, the ability to enable in-development stuff with a single click could finally bring back some excitement.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 12:22 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Microsoft has released a couple of new Windows 11 builds for Insiders flighting the Canary channel. The first build, 28020.1803, under KB5083824, slightly improves the visuals of one of the Settings functions, among other things. Meanwhile, the second build, 29560.1000, has fixes for USB, and more. The full changelog for the builds are given below.

First we have the one for build 28020.1803:

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out with toggle on*

• This update includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs.

[Input]

• Pen settings: we have made refinements to the Pen settings page including small changes to the options for the pen tail button. A new option, “Same as Copilot key”, enables the pen tail button to launch the same app as the Copilot key. Feedback: Share your thoughts in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Devices and Drivers > Bluetooth – Keyboards, Mice, and Pens.

• Improved reliability of configuring fluid dictation option in voice typing (Windows key plus H) settings.

[Settings]

• The Settings Developer Mode dialog is updating to be visually consistent with the rest of Windows 11 dialogs.

Feedback: Share your thoughts in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Settings > All other settings.

[Other]

• Removed extraneous unexpected error from sfc /scannow.

Second we have the changelog for build 29560.1000:

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out with toggle on*

• This update includes platform changes in moving to a new active development build.

[General]

• Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to experience an increase in freezes after the latest flights.
• Fixed an issue resulting in attached USB devices not working for some Insiders after the latest flight.
• Improved reliability of Setting Screensaver Settings back to None.

You can find the official blog posts here (link1, link2) on Microsoft's website.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 6:07 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Friday Windows 11 preview builds are here, with Microsoft rolling out new updates for the Dev and Beta Channels. Build 26300.8155 is out in the Dev Channel, while build 26220.8148 is available for download in the Beta Channel.

New changes in today's updates include haptic feedback for compatible mice and trackpads, a feature we recently reported about in the Logitech MX Master 4 mouse. Now, if you have a compatible device, you can feel physical feedback when performing various actions or hovering over certain elements of the user interface. Additionally, Microsoft renamed the Xbox full-screen experience to Xbox mode and fixed several issues.

Here is the changelog:

[Input]

• Users will be able to feel haptic feedback effects on compatible input devices while performing certain actions, such as aligning objects in PowerPoint, window snapping, resizing, or hovering over the Close button. These haptic effects can be configured in Settings under Bluetooth & devices > Mouse > Haptic signals.

   

[Xbox mode]

• Xbox full screen experience is now Xbox mode

• We’ve added an improved first-run experience when entering Xbox mode

   

[Other]

• Improved performance of launching startup apps after boot (apps which display under Settings > Apps > Startup).

• Fixed an issue resulting in certain apps not being able to sign in recently, citing an internal connection issue when the internet was actually connected.

• Fixed an underlying crash impacting some Insiders’ ability to print with the latest flights.

   

The Beta build also has one more update:

[Windows Protected Print Mode]

• We are adding a new icon to show where a printer supports Windows Protected Print Mode in print settings.

You can find release notes for the Dev Channel here and Beta Channel here.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 6:05 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Windows 11 version 24H2 is approaching the end of support. Later this year, in October, Microsoft will stop updating the operating system for regular consumers (Home and Professional editions). As such, the company is now ensuring users are not left with outdated Windows 11 versions and starting to force-update PCs to Windows 11 version 25H2.

In the updated support documentation, Microsoft posted a notification about the upcoming end of support for Windows 11 version 24H2. The system has a typical two-year release schedule, which is about to end later this year. That means affected users will no longer receive security patches, fixes for known issues, technical support, new features, or even time zone updates. The only way to keep getting those is to move from version 24H2 to 25H2, and Microsoft is about to do that for you:

Devices running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11, version 24H2 that are not managed by IT departments will receive the Windows 11, version 25H2 update automatically. You can choose the time to restart your device or postpone the update.

For now, the change only applies to non-managed devices. In other words, regular consumer devices outside enterprise environments. The good news is that the update from version 24H2 to 25H2 is a minor enablement package, as the two operating systems share the same codebase. As such, the update won't take long, and you should not encounter any disruptions, compatibility issues, or previously unseen bugs.

If you want to speed things up and move to version 25H2 now, go to Settings > Windows Update and click "Check for updates." If your system is eligible, you will see a prompt to update now. Note that updates from Windows 10 to Windows 11 remain optional, even though Windows 10's mainstream support ended last year.

Microsoft recently promised to implement big changes in how Windows Update works, including the ability to postpone updates for as long as you want. However, Microsoft has yet to clarify if that includes staying on a release beyond its support period.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 6:03 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Yesterday, we reported that Microsoft is trying out new tactics to make Edge your default browser in Windows 11. This includes test behavior where Edge automatically loads on startup by default each time your restart your PC, and also informs you of this change via a notification banner, letting you know that you can change this via settings. Naturally, customers are not happy with this move, with many voicing their dissatisfaction in the Neowin comments section too. Now, a browser coalition has slammed Microsoft for its latest experiment too.

In a statement to Neowin, Browser Choice Alliance criticized Microsoft for yet again trying to take control from the hands of Windows 11 users. It claims that Redmond is introducing "unnecessary friction" when switching browsers so customers are forced to use Edge:

Microsoft should prioritize user choice instead of testing a feature that pushes Edge onto Windows 11 users regardless of their chosen browser. By making this a default feature that users must take steps to opt-out of, Microsoft has added unnecessary friction to the user journey. We are closely monitoring Microsoft’s implementation of this feature and urge the company to respect the browser preferences of Windows 11 users instead of continuing to steer users toward Edge.

For those unaware, Browser Choice Alliance is a coalition of browser vendors including Google Chrome, Midori, Opera, Vivaldi, BrowserWorks, and Wavebox. This group has previously blasted Microsoft for "bribing" people to use Edge, and forcing PC vendors to bundle Edge by default in Windows hardware.

However, it's unclear if the coalition's protests have had any tangible effect in the past. For example, Google rarely makes an individual statement about Microsoft's behavior in the browser space, which isn't entirely surprising considering that Chrome is so far ahead in terms of market share that Edge probably isn't worth the attention.

That said, it is worth noting that this "feature" is only being trialed in Edge Beta for now and hasn't made its way to the general public just yet. Now that news of this experiment has hit mainstream media and consumers have voiced their displeasure over the tactic, there is a non-zero probability that Microsoft will decide to revert its decision and kill off this capability for good.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 6:00 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Back in February 2024, Microsoft announced that it was killing off Publisher and removing it from Microsoft 365. For those unaware, this utility is typically used to create professionally branded templates, envelops, and labels, but Redmond stated that customers should start using PowerPoint, Designer, and Word for these purposes instead. Now, ahead of the retirement deadline of October 2026, users have started seeing reminder notifications, and they aren't happy.

A notification with the following wording has started appearing for Publisher customers:

Publisher is retiring

 

Beginning October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported, and you won't be able to access Publisher or open Publisher files.

Neowin has noticed that in several Facebook groups, hundreds of people are publicly voicing their displeasure at this move. Some comments from users are highlighted below:

• It won’t let you open files? That’s bull****.
• F**k, I use publisher for all of our printed handouts. Trying to make a ledger sized PowerPoint is going to be a nightmare. Also publisher has so many amazing alignment/design tools that PowerPoint just doesn't.
• This is why cloud based software sucks.
• It's the only piece of software Microsoft didn't ruin with bad UI, so obviously they had to dump it.
• And there goes my M365 subscription, because I really only use it for publisher projects. I do IT support at a library and use Publisher for a lot of our handouts and such.
• Come on now!!! Why, just why?

Of course, there are also some who claim that this is an understandable decision since Publisher is a fairly legacy tool in terms of functionality, and that Microsoft certainly looked at usage metrics before deciding that it wasn't worth the investment.

That said, Publisher users are still not happy that they won't even be able to open their existing Publisher files. Indeed, Microsoft has highlighted considerably convoluted ways to export Publisher content and then re-open it in Word, PowerPoint, and Designer. Notably, this retirement echoes the feelings behind the retirement of WordPad, where Microsoft eventually began integrating the same functionalities in Notepad.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 5:57 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Microsoft Teams receives new features fairly regularly, and it loses a few from time to time too. However, the former category outweighs the latter by quite a long margin, as you may have noticed in our monthly roundup for the new capabilities added to Microsoft's popular online communication and collaboration platform in March 2026. The good news is that Redmond has also announced that it is working on more enhancements, some of which will be appreciated very much.

Organization of the Teams UX has always been a bit of a challenge for Microsoft, especially considering that the software combines so much content, ranging from regular chats to pinned chats, meeting chats, teams, and channels. The firm is now trying to remediate some complaints in this area by automatically categorizing muted chats and meeting chats in their own categories. The former section will be on by default, while the latter will be off by default, allowing customers to toggle the configuration according to their preferences. This should reduce clutter significantly and is scheduled for release for all Teams customers in May 2026.

In the same vein and in the same month, Microsoft is introducing a new filter that will allow you to access read items quickly from the unread chats section. The way this works right now is that chats and channels have a filter that allows you to see unread chats only, but it is a bit clunky and you need to perform a couple of extra clicks to get the default view back again. Microsoft is resolving this issue by showing an eye icon next to each section. When you click on it, you'll begin to see read items in the same section as well.

Microsoft has a couple of other capabilities in tow for May 2026 too. A user experience enhancement will see unmuted chats section showing a purple indicator, while mentions and followed threads will show a purple counter when they affect the Teams badge counter shown on the app bar. Finally, macOS presenters will be able to share a single application window, allowing other participants to annotate on top of it directly.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of Teams features that Microsoft is working on. The Redmond firm will likely update its public Microsoft 365 Roadmap as it continues adding new capabilities to work on.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 5:56 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Despite putting some blame on user error, Microsoft is aware that Windows 11 has issues which is why it promised some big improvements soon. If you have no more patience, 'switching to Linux' is an option and Ubuntu, from Canonical, is a very popular distro that's worth checking out.

Back in 2023, going Ubuntu was definitely profitable from a performance standpoint as we saw that the Linux OS was often beating out Windows 11. Microsoft, of course, is promising better things on the upcoming version 26H2, so it will be interesting to see how Ubuntu Desktop's contemporary 26.04 LTS (Longer Term Support) version called "Resolute Raccoon" will stack up.

Speaking of which, Canonical has announced the system requirements for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS version that lands later this month, and there has been a sharp bump to the hardware requirements. The official support documentation says: "Ubuntu Desktop 26.04 LTS requires a 2 GHz dual-core processor or better, a minimum of 6GB RAM and 25 GB of free hard drive space."

While Ubuntu LTS 24.04 (Noble Numbat) had also needed a 2 GHz processor, memory eligibility is seeing a big jump from 4GB to 6GB.

This means, on paper at least, Ubuntu's system requirements are higher than Windows 11 as the latter still recommends a 1GHz 2-core CPU, and 4GB of RAM. Only in the department of storage will Ubuntu still only require 25GB of space. Although to be fair to Canonical here, Windows 11's new AI features do require a more powerful system as the CPU and RAM requirement for them did get a big revision.

As you can see in the table above, Ubuntu wins in one area and that is TPM requirement. It is not enforced on Ubuntu and neither is Secure Boot (which is undergoing a major update currently).

Interestingly, as we are talking about LTS here, Microsoft actually makes the TPM requirement optional on its IoT Enterprise 2024 edition, which is the company's LTS release. Even the system RAM quantity is reduced from 4GB to 2GB. UEFI/Secure Boot is also optional on Windows 11 LTSC 2024.

Hence, if you wish to switch to Linux, and have a relatively weak system, you are better off with some other distro. There are several options like Fedora, which has lower requirements than Ubuntu desktop. There are also others like the Zorin OS, and if you use AMD Ryzen, then Nobara is another interesting option.

Also, if you can do without a GUI like the one Ubuntu Desktop offers (GNOME by default), then using Ubuntu Server is an option as its requirements are definitely leaner at just 1GB RAM and 4GB for storage, at the minimum.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 4 April 2026 at 5:53 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

At the beginning of each month, Valve releases the latest results of its Hardware & Software Survey, which offers an overview of the hardware people use to access the most popular gaming platform. It also shows how popular various operating systems are, which is particularly useful, considering Microsoft's unwillingness to share official data. Here is how Valve describes it:

Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer.

This month, there are no major changes in the survey. Windows 11 remains the most popular operating system, with 66.65% (-0.06 points) of all reported devices running the infamous operating system from Microsoft. Windows 10 is second with a much more modest 25.36% market share (-2.37 points). Windows 7 is still alive and kicking on Steam—0.08% of all participants still use the 17-year-old operating system.

To no one's surprise, Windows is installed on 92.33% of all Steam users who participated in the survey (participation is optional). Linux is second with a 5.33% market share, while macOS is third with 2.35%.

The most popular hardware on Steam includes the desktop NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card (3.92%), 16GB of RAM (40.97%), a six-core processor (27.77%), 8GB of video memory (27.52%), and a 1080p display.

Despite all the backlash and hate that NVIDIA gets these days, the "green team" remains the dominant choice among gamers, with the GeForce graphics cards holding a massive 72.83% market share (AMD is second with a 18.55%). As for processors, Intel is first with a 54.98%, while AMD is very close with 45.02%.

You can find more details from the latest survey on the official website.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 3 April 2026 at 5:14 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Earlier today, while writing about a new classic Outlook bug that won't let users send emails, I remarked that the push for New Outlook is really adversely affecting the classic app due to the shift in focus.

The same has been true in the case of Microsoft's Edge as well since the company has actively tried to get more users onto its web browser. This has in fact been going on since back in 2021 when Windows 11 first launched. If you recall, Microsoft had called Google Chrome a "so 2008" web browser that just wasn't as trustworthy as Edge. The move at the time was called "desperate" according to rival browser makers, and despite that, the Redmond giant has kept pushing Edge as the default browser choice across various Windows and Microsoft apps, even going so far as to block Registry hacks to alter default app behaviours.

There had been a few positive developments too in this regard, as Microsoft itself had later acknowledged how important default app choices can be in terms of performance, convenience, and such.

With that in mind, perhaps Microsoft is now testing a new change on Edge on Windows 11, which automatically loads up Edge by default on startup. This new behavior is part of the latest Edge beta release version 147.0.3912.37 (spotted by Windows Central) and as you can see, the browser is showing a banner up top which says:

Edge now launches when you sign into Windows, so it's ready when you want to browse. Change this anytime in Settings.

It is noteworthy that Microsoft already preloads Edge by default on Windows 11 system start-up, though with this new change, Edge will now start every time you start your PC, unless you opt out of it by clicking on the "No thanks" option on that banner.

That's the sad part, this new UX will be on by default, and you will have to opt out yourself instead of Microsoft asking you whether you want this or not. Neowin did not get this prompt when we tested it, so it seems it's a phased rollout and not everyone is getting it.

Perhaps this is Microsoft's way of testing the waters to see if users will start using Edge as it sneakily gets into their daily workflows, and eventually become their default browser.

Let us know in the comments what you think of this new prompt on Edge and whether you have also noticed it on your Edge beta install.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 3 April 2026 at 6:28 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Back in early 2024, Microsoft announced that it was updating Secure Boot keys as they were going to become 15 years old in 2026, which is also when they are set to expire. As such, in June last year, the company shared a timeline of the change.

At the time, Microsoft had informed that new keys and certificates would be installed on user PCs via Windows Update, and in fact, the company has already rolled those out with the February 2026 Patch Tuesday updates.

So if you have got the latest Windows Updates installed you should be fine. Microsoft says that the new certs must be installed before June 2026, so make sure to get the February update or a later update as they are cumulative and will pack the necessary Secure Boot upgrade as well. Updated boot manager and Secure Boot certificates are crucial for protection against malware like bootkits.

Recently though, we had complained about Microsoft regarding a temporary lapse of judgment from the company wherein crucial information regarding this Secure Boot update was mistakenly removed from the company. Thankfully though it was restored again at a later date.

Microsoft has done a 180 now, as today the company published a couple of new support articles which are, in fact, helpful. The company has announced a new change to the Windows Security app such that it can alert users about whether they have installed the necessary update.

Essentially, Microsoft has added colored marks to the Secure Boot icon inside the Windows Security app. A green checkmark is supposed to indicate that a device is "fully updated" and it "has received all required Secure Boot certificate updates, and the updated Boot Manager has been installed", and so "no action is needed."

On the other hand, a yellow exclamation mark indicates that the device is running an older Secure Boot certificate that requires updating. Hence the recommendation in this case is to connect to the internet and update the device via Windows Update.

Finally, a red cross or stop icon indicates that a device still possesses expired Secure Boot certificates, and so it requires a firmware update to fix.

A helpful table has also been shared by the company for additional guidance:

Aside from the new caution feature on the Windows Security app, Microsoft has added that more such Secure Boot warnings, like system alerts, will be rolling out starting May 2026.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 3 April 2026 at 6:24 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

This week, a senior Microsoft engineer defended the company explaining how user error is often the root cause of several Windows issues. While that is certainly true to an extent, there are indeed major problems from time to time which have prompted the company to release emergency patches, like in the last few months themselves.

Microsoft though is promising things will change. Towards the end of last month, the tech giant announced some major commitments to refine Windows as it detailed aspects of the OS it wishes to improve sooner, rather than later. For example, the tech giant explained the performance upgrades that are in store for us with Windows 11 26H2 and 27H2. Many more promises were made which you can find in our dedicated piece here. One of those is regarding the movable taskbar and looks like Microsoft is already heavily into it.

Following Windows 11, Microsoft has made a similar announcement today for PowerShell too, which happens to be one of the most useful native tools available on its OS.

The announcement has been made following the delayed release of PowerShell's latest Long Term Support (LTS) version, 7.6. In a new blog post penned by Senior Product Manager Jason Helmick, Microsoft says that it is aware of how a delay like this can affect enterprise users and developers who rely on such releases. In the blog post, Helmick has explained why it happened and what Microsoft is doing to improve in the future.

He notes that PowerShell releases typically follow a structured cadence, with three to four updates per month across versions such as 7.4.x, 7.5.x, and 7.6.x. Each release spans 29 packages, eight package formats, four architectures, which include both x64 (AMD64) and Arm64, and support for eight operating systems. So to trial all this, it is claimed that Microsoft has to test nearly 287,855 times per release across platforms. Essentially this is meant to highlight the complexity of testing and validating such a release.

With the latest version, Microsoft began facing bugs and issues last year around October 2025 when packaging-related changes introduced a bug in preview which broke Alpine builds. Following that in November, new compliance requirements forced changes to packaging tooling for non-Windows platforms, delaying fixes until December. And this happened to be the holiday season which meant a freeze at this point further slowed progress down.

Meanwhile, early this year in January 2026, compatibility conflicts surfaced including a mismatch in glibc versions affecting RHEL 8 systems. The blog post noted that “packaging changes required deeper rework than initially expected,” thus leading to extended validation and backporting efforts through February. As such a stable release could only be achieved in March.

Jason Helmick says that Microsoft has learned a lot from this mishap and in response, the company shifted strategy mid-cycle by prioritizing a full rebuild of packaging workflows for formats such as RPM, DEB, and PKG. After that the company validated these changes across all supported platforms and aligned release branches to ensure consistency, choosing reliability over speed.

Going forward, Microsoft has introduced changes to prevent similar delays. The tech giant notes that "a key gap during this release cycle was the lack of early signals indicating that the packaging changes would significantly impact the release timeline." As such, the steps include clearer release ownership, improved internal tracking, more consistent preview schedules, and increased automation to deal with changing requirements. The company also plans to enhance communication through its repositories such that risks and issues can be flagged earlier.

Even though the announcement is mainly about fixing release time delays, a better, more robust quality control also implies that the overall app experience should go up too.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 3 April 2026 at 6:21 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix