open source

Microsoft’s new VibeVoice marks a striking shift in what open-source text-to-speech can do: from short, single-voice clips to hour‑scale, multi‑speaker spoken audio that resembles a produced podcast — and it’s available now for researchers and tinkerers to try. The framework packages a compact...

If you need to burn a playable DVD from a handful of home videos or make archival data discs for long-term storage, the software you choose matters more than most people think — compatibility with players, menu authoring, output quality, and reliability during the burn process are the difference...

Windows ships with a competent baseline of tools, but for users who prefer transparency, control, and long-term maintainability, the open-source alternatives on this How‑To Geek roster are worth considering — this article examines the nine apps the original author installs on every fresh Windows...

Windows PowerToys is one of those quietly powerful Windows add‑ons: a free, modular toolkit that can shave minutes off everyday tasks for heavy desktop users, but it’s deliberately optional — and for many casual users it’s a luxury rather than a necessity. Background / Overview Windows PowerToys...

Microsoft’s PowerToys 0.93 delivered a much-needed Settings dashboard overhaul and major Command Palette performance wins, but the suite still lacks a unified Settings search—and community work tracked on GitHub plus Microsoft’s own roadmap notes indicate a settings search bar is targeted for...

The shift from Windows habits to a Linux mindset is less about swapping a wallpaper and more about adopting a new set of expectations: about software freedom, update models, privacy defaults, tooling, and even the language you type into search boxes. A recent How-To Geek piece lays out five...

The arrival of an open-source AppLocker policy generator aimed at simplifying XML policy creation for Windows administrators deserves attention: AppLockerGen promises a lightweight, web-like interface to author, merge, inspect, and export AppLocker policies — but the tool’s appeal comes with...

Microsoft’s open-source transformation is no longer a talking point—it’s the operating system behind how the company builds cloud services, ships developer tools, and now delivers AI at planetary scale. From a headline‑grabbing 20,000‑line patch of Linux kernel code in 2009 to the containerized...

Windows 10’s clock is counting down to end of support, and with it comes a hard choice for privacy‑minded users: pay to keep an aging platform patched, accept newer versions of Windows with tighter cloud hooks, or make a clean break to something else entirely. The argument gaining traction is...

Flyoobe, the unofficial successor to the Flyby11 patcher, has quietly added a notable new convenience to its Out‑Of‑Box Experience (OOBE) toolkit: the ability to set a default browser immediately after installation and even fetch and install a third‑party browser during first run. This addition...

Open-source software quietly underpins a huge amount of the modern Windows experience, and ZDNET’s recent roundup of “10 open-source apps I recommend every Windows user download — for free” lays out a practical, privacy-conscious toolkit any Windows user can assemble without spending a penny...

The small open‑source utility ecosystem that helps users install Windows 11 on older machines just took another step: the developer behind Flyby11 has expanded the project into Flyoobe and pushed an ISO‑aware update that adds preview Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE) windows, improved ISO mounting...

Flyoobe’s 1.2 release quietly expands a well‑known Windows 11 installer bypass into a fuller Out‑Of‑Box Experience (OOBE) toolkit — adding preview OOBE windows designed to work with Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool and Rufus, tightening ISO handling, and trimming memory use — while the project’s...

Flyoobe 1.2 arrives as a focused, pragmatic tool that folds the original Flyby11 upgrade bypass into a broader Out‑Of‑Box Experience (OOBE) customization suite — and with that consolidation comes both useful capabilities for hobbyists and admins and significant security, support, and compliance...

On a Windows box I reach for a Linux shell first — not because Windows tooling is broken, but because the Unix-style command line gives me the fastest, most portable path from idea to execution. That preference, which many readers will recognize from long years of using bash, zsh, or other...

The UK government’s five‑year Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft — the Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 (SPA24) — commits public bodies to a scale of procurement that the Crown Commercial Service expects will amount to roughly £9 billion over the life of the deal, and that...

PowerToys 0.93 nudges an already indispensable toolkit toward something more professional: a Windows 11–style settings dashboard, a major engineering overhaul of Command Palette that leans on Ahead‑of‑Time (AOT) compilation for tangible speed and footprint gains, a presentation‑ready Spotlight...

Windhawk turns Windows 11 from a locked-down, opinionated UI into a modular playground you can tailor back toward productivity—and the four modules I reach for first (Classic Context Menu, Classic Navigation Bar, Vertical Taskbar, and Windows 11 Start Menu Styler) are small installs that deliver...

If you miss the “shuffle” slideshow from the old Windows photo experience, you’re not alone — several third‑party viewers restore and extend that capability. This feature guide evaluates the best photo viewer apps for Windows 11/10 that include a Shuffle / Random Slideshow option, shows how to...

GitHub’s CEO, Thomas Dohmke, announced on August 11, 2025 that he will step down to return to his “startup roots,” a move that coincides with Microsoft folding GitHub’s operations more closely into its CoreAI organization — an arrangement that accelerates the platform’s AI-first strategy while...