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Tiling window managers aren’t a Linux-only productivity secret anymore — Windows has a healthy, maturing ecosystem of tilers that can radically change how you work, and four projects stand out right now for stability, polish, or sheer ambition. Overview Tiling window managers automatically arrange application windows in non-overlapping layouts so everything important stays visible and accessible without constant manual resizing. On Windows, that idea shows up in different forms: modules that...

Purdue University Northwest’s IT reminder is a timely, practical warning: Microsoft has scheduled Windows 10 end‑of‑support for October 14, 2025, and campus machines must be upgraded to Windows 11 or replaced — older hardware that cannot meet Windows 11 requirements will need to be retired or remediated before that date. The university’s notice confirms that desktop notifications are being shown to users, that hardware audits have been distributed, and that departments were expected to...

Zenity’s expanded partnership with Microsoft plugs real-time, inline security directly into Microsoft Copilot Studio agents — a move that promises to make agentic AI safer for widespread enterprise use while raising new operational and architectural questions for security teams. The announcement, carried by the company and live in Azure Marketplace previews, describes an enforcement model that interposes Zenity’s controls inside each Copilot Studio agent to prevent data exfiltration, block...

Microsoft has quietly but meaningfully shifted the balance of power between autonomous AI agents and enterprise defenders: Copilot Studio now supports near‑real‑time runtime security controls that let organizations route an agent’s planned actions through external monitors (Microsoft Defender, third‑party XDR vendors, or custom endpoints) and approve or block those actions in sub‑second timeframes while the agent runs. Background Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low‑code environment within the...

Multiple undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were cut in early September, producing widespread internet slowdowns across South Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe and prompting Microsoft to warn Azure customers that traffic routed through the affected corridor may experience increased latency while operators reroute and rebalance capacity. Background / Overview The global internet is not an abstract cloud floating above the world — it is anchored by thousands of kilometers of...

Microsoft’s Surface social post that promoted the Surface Pro as the “ultimate research buddy” quickly became an object lesson in how small creative mistakes can balloon into widespread reputation noise: the image used in the official Surface account’s post displayed the unmistakable visual cues of iPadOS, not Windows, drew a Community Notes correction on X, and was deleted soon after as the replies and memes piled up. Background and overview The post in question — a promotional image...

Windows 11’s upcoming 25H2 release has arrived in preview form with a familiar headline: it’s small, largely cosmetic under the hood, and — according to early independent testing — it does not deliver measurable performance gains over 24H2 for real‑world CPU and productivity workloads. Early benchmark data from Phoronix shows Windows 11 version 25H2 matching 24H2 on average across dozens of CPU‑focused tests, while Linux (Ubuntu) continues to outperform Windows in many of those same...

Tiny11’s emergence as a practical way to run a lean, modern Windows 11 on older PCs has suddenly moved from niche hobby to mainstream conversation — and it arrives at a combustible moment: Microsoft’s announced end of mainstream Windows 10 support on October 14, 2025, places millions of users and thousands of organizations at a crossroads between costly hardware refreshes, paid extended updates, or creative third‑party workarounds. Background / Overview Microsoft’s timetable for retiring...

Windows 11’s hardware rules mean you can’t treat compatibility as a single checkbox — it’s a chain of interlocking requirements (TPM 2.0, UEFI/Secure Boot, a supported CPU, enough RAM and storage) that together determine whether a Dell laptop can be upgraded safely and with vendor support. The steps below summarize the practical checks and tools Dell recommends, show you how to verify and enable key features in firmware, explain safe upgrade pathways, and identify realistic alternatives when...

Internet traffic between Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe slowed sharply after multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, forcing carriers and cloud operators to reroute traffic and warning users — most visibly Microsoft Azure customers — that they could see higher latency while repairs and contingency measures are deployed. Background The global internet rides on a physical substrate: submarine (subsea) fiber‑optic cables laid on the ocean floor. Industry and...

Microsoft Azure users saw slower-than-normal responses after multiple undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were reported damaged, forcing traffic onto longer detours while Microsoft and carrier partners rerouted and rebalanced capacity to preserve reachability. Background / Overview The global internet rests on a web of submarine fiber-optic cables; a narrow corridor through the Red Sea and the approaches to the Suez Canal is one of the most important east–west funnels connecting Asia...

Microsoft’s quiet pruning of long‑standing Windows apps has accelerated into a visible strategy: the company is retiring or removing familiar built‑ins — from the browser that once ruled the web to niche creative tools and the lightweight Mail client — and asking users and organizations to migrate to consolidated, cloud‑oriented alternatives. The moves are pragmatic from a product‑management perspective, but they raise practical questions about backward compatibility, data portability, and...

Microsoft is expanding its on-device AI camera toolkit: Windows Studio Effects can now be enabled on additional cameras — like external USB webcams or a laptop’s rear camera — on supported Copilot+ PCs, and the change has begun rolling out in recent Windows 11 Insider Preview builds. This update moves Studio Effects beyond the device’s built-in front-facing webcam and makes Microsoft’s NPU-accelerated enhancements available to a broader range of setups; the driver update enabling the change...

A fresh line of forensic work from community labs suggests the wave of disappearing and allegedly “bricked” NVMe SSDs that alarmed Windows users in August may not be a mass Windows regression at all, but instead a narrower supply‑chain and firmware‑provenance problem: pre‑release (engineering) Phison controller firmware accidentally present on a subset of drives appears to reproduce the failure pattern, while production firmware does not. Background / Overview In mid‑August, after Microsoft...

Windows 11’s setup still nudges you toward a Microsoft account — but a handful of reliably tested workarounds let you get a classic, offline local account instead, and the choice you make affects everything from BitLocker recovery to OneDrive sync and feature availability. Background Microsoft has steadily pushed Windows toward a cloud-first model: integration with OneDrive, centralized device management, and features that rely on a Microsoft account are increasingly front-and-center during...

Windows 11 users and system builders were jolted in mid‑August when a flurry of reports described NVMe SSDs suddenly disappearing, corrupting files or becoming completely inaccessible during large, sustained writes — an incident initially blamed on Microsoft’s August cumulative update (KB5063878) but later reframed around incompatible or pre‑release firmware on a subset of Phison‑based drives. Background The alert began after Microsoft shipped its August 12, 2025 cumulative update for...

Microsoft has quietly extended Copilot from the browser into the Windows desktop, adding a set of Copilot file actions directly into OneDrive’s Windows surfaces so subscribers can locate, summarize, compare and interrogate files without opening Office or a web browser—a change that reshapes everyday file workflows while raising fresh questions about privacy, limits and governance. Background / Overview Microsoft’s strategy for Copilot has consistently been to move intelligence closer to...

Yes — you can run Windows applications on Linux, and there are multiple, practical ways to do it today: traditional compatibility layers like Wine, user-friendly front-ends such as Bottles, game-focused solutions via Steam/Proton, classic virtualization with VirtualBox (or Quickemu/QEMU), and an emerging containerized approach exemplified by WinBoat. Background / Overview Linux desktop compatibility with Windows software has progressed from hobbyist tinkering to a realistic toolkit for many...

If you’ve ever set up a new Windows PC or clicked through a Windows update without scrutinizing every prompt, you may have opened File Explorer one day and discovered that your Documents, Desktop or Pictures folders now live inside a OneDrive folder — and that many of those files are quietly syncing to the cloud. That relocation is not a mysterious data leak or malware: it’s the result of Windows’ and OneDrive’s “folder backup” / Known Folder Move features, which try to protect your files by...

Tiny11’s latest builder refresh is a decisive step for power users who want Windows 11 without the inbox app clutter or the newest AI‑first integrations: NTDev’s rewritten PowerShell pipeline can now remove Copilot, the revamped Outlook client, and Microsoft Teams from a rebuilt Windows 11 installer, produce substantially smaller ISOs using DISM’s recovery (LZMS/LZX) compression, and include proactive measures to reduce the chance of removed apps being silently reinstalled. Background /...