OpenMouse is a new hardware-agnostic, open-source, browser-based control panel for gaming mice that aims to support a host of gaming mice that would otherwise require installing software in order to change things like basic button mapping and sensor or MCU options. It works via WebHID, which means that it will work with macOS, Linux, and Windows, as long as users use a Chromium-based browser.

OpenMouse is still in the early stages of development, and it is not yet available to the public, but the development team claims to already have support for brands like WLMouse, Endgame Gear, Pulsar, Logitech, and the Orbital Pathfinder. Surprisingly, the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike is also on the support list, and a recent post on the OpenMouse account on X claims that Support for Logitech's HITS inductive switch and haptics tech is already on the way.

Amid the controversy about the upcoming California and Colorado age verification laws, System76 CEO, Carl Richell, revealed that he was meeting with lawmakers to champion exemptions that would allow open-source operating systems, like Linux distributions, to forego the inclusion of such age verification systems. As reported by GamingOnLinux, Article 30 of Colorado Senate Bill 26-051, now available online in its final form, now states that the article does not apply to "an operating system provider or developer that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software without any platform-imposed technical or contractual restrictions imposed by the provider or developer on installing all modified versions."

For its part, the California Digital Age Assurance Act, bill AB 1856, now contains similar verbiage relating to open-source OS providers, except California excludes open-source developers from the bill entirely. A recent amendment to the bill reads: "'Operating system provider' does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software." These exemptions functionally mean that most Linux distributions will not require users to submit information for age verifications, although the water gets a bit murkier with dual-license distributions, like SteamOS. In the case of SteamOS, although the underlying Arch Linux-based distribution is open-source and exempt, the included Steam Client is still a proprietary app store that will likely require age data. Notably there does not seem to be an exception in the California bill for open-source or similarly licensed browsers, which means open-source browsers, like Firefox and Chromium, may still need to build in support to request the signal for age attestation from the operating system.

Mozilla, the company behind one of the last non-Chromium browsers, Firefox, has appointed Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as the new CEO. Under his leadership, the company plans to transform Firefox into a "modern AI browser." This announcement provides a glimpse into the future direction of the Firefox browser, sparking concerns within the community that one of the last independent browser projects will adopt AI features that may not be widely desired. While modernization of browsers is generally positive, the Firefox user base tends to prefer fast and lightweight solutions over AI-enhanced software. Below, you can find the entire new message from the new CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo:

After more than a decade of focusing exclusively on mobile platforms, Samsung is finally bringing its Samsung Internet browser to Windows-based PCs. The company announced today that a beta version of the Chromium-based browser will be available for Windows 11 and Windows 10 systems running version 1809 or newer, starting October 30, 2025, in the United States and Korea. It is a significant decision for Samsung, which has maintained a mobile-first approach since the browser's inception, essentially leaving desktop users out in the cold while millions enjoyed the experience on their Galaxy devices. Additionally, it shows that Samsung may venture into more applications as the local AI integration takes off.

The desktop version is designed to create a unified browsing ecosystem across Samsung's product lineup, letting users carry their digital experience seamlessly between phones and computers. Users who log in with their Samsung Account will have their bookmarks, browsing history, and saved passwords synchronized through Samsung Pass, which should make authentication and form filling straightforward across devices. The browser also brings intelligent features powered by Galaxy AI, including Browsing Assist, which can summarize web pages and translate content on the fly. For those switching between their Galaxy phone and PC, the browser will prompt them to pick up where they left off, eliminating the hassle of hunting down tabs across different devices.

With the latest Firefox Nightly build, Mozilla is testing what it calls "Copy Link to Highlight," which allows you to create links to a specific string of text on a webpage by highlighting it. The feature works exactly the same way as it does in Google's Chromium. After highlighting text, there is an option in the context menu to copy a link to the highlighted text, which produces a link with the same "#:~:text=" tag that Chromium browsers have had for years. Of course, this being Firefox, there is also an option to copy a clean link to the highlight, which will strip unwanted things like trackers and affiliate links from the highlight link. When opening a link with the text highlight tag, browsers will direct you to the highlighted text—helpful for those times when you want to share a snippet of a website without taking a screenshot.

The highlighted text link is available in Firefox Nightly build 143.0a1, which is available on Linux, macOS, and Windows. There is no indication if this feature will make it to the Android version of the browser, and the feature is currently being held in Nightly for testing until the development team can be certain it's stable. Mozilla is also testing an API to enable Firefox extensions to detect if the recently added vertical tabs feature is enabled or not. This should enable extension developers to inform users if their extension is incompatible with vertical tabs and adjust the extension UI if need be. There are also a number of bug fixes in the nightly build as well, including fixes for the built-in unit converter and a bunch of minor UI fixes to features like the New Tab page and certain search features. Read the full release notes here for more details.

NComputing, a global leader in thin client computing solutions, announces the launch of its RX540 thin client, powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 platform. This state-of-the-art device offers a substantial leap in CPU performance, memory bandwidth, and local GPU performance.

Optimized for a wide range of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions, the RX540 provides an exceptional blend of functionality, performance, and affordability. By optimizing LEAF OS on the CM5 platform, NComputing has built a thin client that delivers performance on par with traditional x86-64 endpoints while maintaining cost-effectiveness, enhancing multitasking capabilities and boosting productivity across the board.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the launch of Supporters of Chromium-Based Bowsers. This initiative aims to fund open development and enhance projects within the Chromium ecosystem, ensuring broad support and sustainability for open source contributions that will drive technological advancement.

"With the launch of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers, we are taking another step forward in empowering the open source community," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "This project will provide much-needed funding and development support for open development of projects within the Chromium ecosystem."

Intel Graphics has introduced feature rivaling NVIDIA VSR (virtual super resolution) for Chromium-based web-browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, which enhances the quality of streaming video, both from lower resolutions to higher; as well as improving the quality at native resolution. This was discovered in the change-log of a Chrome build, which talks about the introduction of a "-features=IntelVpSuperResolution" command-line argument to start Chrome with, to enable the feature.

Apparently, the Intel VSR feature works on Intel iGPUs dating back to the 11th Gen Core ("Tiger Lake" and "Rocket Lake,") based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture. The feature should come particularly handy when trying to upscale online video from lower resolutions (such as SD 360p/480p or HD 720p), up to Full HD (1080p) or higher. It's reported that VSR is enabled by default on Chrome/Edge 110, and doesn't require that command-line argument. To use it, you will need Intel iGPU graphics drivers version 27.20.100.8681 or later.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has been one of the biggest browsers in the world by market share. However, that was some years ago and the browser technology keeps developing to a point where a 3-month non-updated browser is slow and insecure. The latest version of Internet Explorer is version 11, which you can find still running on your Windows PC. You might wonder why is it still present when Microsoft announced its Chromium-based Edge browser some time ago. Well, many applications have built-int code that needs Internet Explorer to work. If there is no IE browser, the application would display errors and likely not run well.

However, Microsoft today announced that the company will be moving on from IE 11 and that it is finally killing it by June 15th, 2022. The IE browser represents a code that is probably hard to maintain and a potential security hole. That is why the company is deciding to end it in 2022. If you are wondering how the company plans to migrate a plethora of apps from needing IE, Microsoft is preparing Internet Explorer compatibility mode on its Edge browser. That way it ensures that all of the existing applications would run under the Edge browser and that old and insecure piece of code is removed from Windows.

Microsoft has recently announced it's timeline for the end of Internet Explorer 11 & Microsoft Edge Legacy support across its Microsoft 365 apps and services. Starting November 30th the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11, and beginning August 17, 2021, the remaining Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11. Microsoft Edge Legacy will also stop receiving new security updates after March 9, 2021. Microsoft recommends users migrate to the New Microsoft Edge which is based on Chromium and has been progressively rolling out to users.

Microsoft has released its Chromium-based Edge browser some time ago and it is already capturing the market. Just in April of this year, it became the world's second most popular web-browser, just behind Google Chrome. Surpassing even Mozilla's Firefox web-browser, the new Edge is rising in popularity very quickly. So far, Microsoft gave an option for Windows 10 users to just download the new browser if they want to, or the only Edge browser you had would be the old version based on the EdgeHTML engine. Even though Microsoft has recently decided to start rolling out the new Chromium-based browser via OS updates, the old version could still find its way in the OS and there wouldn't be a new one present. Starting with update 20H2, Microsoft is bundling the new browser with OS update, making it a default option in the OS.

While the new browser is going to replace old Edge for default opening of links or some files like PDF, the old Edge will still be present. A lot of legacy applications are relying on opening some of their stuff in the old browser, and there sure would be problems if it would be gone. Additionally, gone are the year plus month names for Windows 10 updates, like 1803, 1903, and 1909. Now you get a year plus the first or second half of the year. For example, the next update is 20H2 (second half of 2020), and the one after it is 21H1 (first half of 2021). This is done to avoid confusion and with this Microsoft announced that updates will be faster in general.

Intel is preparing lots of interesting designs for the future and it is slowly shaping their vision for the next generation of computing devices. Following the big.LITTLE design principle of Arm, Intel decided to try and build its version using x86-64 cores instead of Arm ones, called Lakefield. And we already have some information about the new Alder Lake CPUs based on Lakefield design that are set to be released in the future. Thanks to a report from Chrome Unboxed, who found the patches submitted to Chromium open-source browser, used as a base for many browsers like Google Chrome and new Microsoft Edge, there is a piece of potential information that suggests Alder Lake CPUs could arrive very soon.

Rumored to feature up to 16 cores, Alder Lake CPUs could present an x86 iteration of the big.LITTLE design, where one pairs eight "big" and eight "small" cores that are activated according to increased or decreased performance requirements, thus bringing the best of both worlds - power efficiency and performance. This design would be present on Intel's 3D packaging technology called Foveros. The Alder Lake CPU support patch was added on April 27th to the Chrome OS repository, which would indicate that Intel will be pushing these CPUs out relatively quickly. The commit message titled "add support for ADL gpiochip" contained the following: "On Alderlake platform, the pinctrl (gpiochip) driver label is "INTC105x:00", hence declare it properly." The Chrome Unboxed speculates that Alder Lake could come out in mid or late 2021, depending on how fast Intel could supply OEMs with enough volume.

PWAs, or progressive web apps, are web-based software whose functions are dynamically fetched from the web. Twitter and WhatsApp Web are examples. Their Windows Store editions are essentially UWP Chromium containers that run the PWA. When it debuted in 2011, Chrome OS was intended to be entirely web-based, with a Chrome web-browser running web-based services such as Google Docs or G-Mail. Eventually, there arose a need for a larger software ecosystem, and Chromebook manufacturers pressured Google to add Play Store, and bring the Android software ecosystem to the Chromebook.

A trend over the last couple of years is PWAs, and YouTube TV is the latest addition, with a PWA added to Play Store, replacing the Android app. The PWA creates a lightweight Chromium container without Chrome's bulk, to run the PWA on. It also gives the user the impression of using an app outside the web-browser. The addition of the YouTube TV PWA is a strong indication that at least for Chrome OS, Google is phasing out locally-stored apps in favor of lightweight PWAs, as it rightfully should. Chrome OS was intended to be an evolutionary next-step to PCs with locally-stored software - a lightweight OS for lightweight clients that serve as edge devices, with much of the processing and storage handled by the cloud.

Microsoft's latest Edge browser based on the open-source Chromium browser is now the 2nd most popular browser in the world. Having launched just three months ago, it already has increased its userbase around the world to become more popular than even some long-lasting alternatives such as Mozilla Firefox, which is now the 3rd most popular option, showing that Firefox's userbase is decreasing in favor of the new Edge browser by Microsoft. The number one is still Google's Chrome which owns the majority of users at 68.5%, while Edge is at 7.59%. Firefox is present with a 7.19% market share, placing it just below Edge. It is impressive to see a new browser gain big userbase in such a short time, as alternative browsers often take years to gain even 2% of the market. You can check out the whole browser market share chart below.

Just in April, Microsoft was introducing the first flighting programs for their chromium-based Edge browser, with daily (Canary) and weekly (Developer) builds being made available to users. Fast forward four months, and the company is now making it available in beta form - the last step between general availability and an official, "finished" release.

Microsoft decided to stop developing their in-house browser engine, instead taking from and building upon the open-source Chromium project, from where Google chrome takes most of its components. The decision was meant to allow Microsoft to become a more powerful player in the development of Chromium and the internet browsing experience as a whole, facilitating developers' work. The Beta of Edge supports 14 languages and some quality of life features, such as the ability to decide whether their new tab page is laid-out in a Focused, Inspirational or Informational mode. Some other supported features include Microsoft Search (integrated with Bing), Internet Explorer mode and Windows Defender Application Guard. There's also a tracking prevention browsing mode, which prevents tracking from websites that you haven't really visited. This features includes three levels of privacy - Basic, Balanced and Strict. Will this be enough to make you jump towards the Edge?

Microsoft has released the first public version of their Chromium-based rendition of Edge. Remember that Microsoft announced back in December of last year that they would be ceasing development efforts on their own browser back-end, and would instead be adopting the Chromium open-source coding - which powers the ubiquitous, 65% market share-earning Google Chrome. The plan is to streamline development efforts, reduce web development fragmentation, and contribute to a more open internet by building and contributing towards the Chromium project.

Now, users can take a look at the Chromium-powered version of Edge (yes, it did keep the Edge branding). The Chromium-based Edge release is nowhere near completion - MIcrosoft is instead using flighting programs, like it is doing with most of its products now, to aid in the development of features and bug correction - having a global Q&A is much better than having a dedicated team in-house, after all. This is being done via Canary and Developer builds of the Edge browser, where Canary are available daily, and follow the development flow of the browser at is being developed, or via weekly Developer builds, which should bring more impactful performance and feature upgrades - along with some added stability.

So, it goes like this: Microsoft has confirmed they will be killing of their own-developed Edge browser in favor of a Chromium-based alternative. However... The new browser will retain Microsoft's Edge nomenclature, instead of parting ways with the (likely damaged) branding. Microsoft is committing to the open-based Chromium backbone, and will be building upon its database to contribute towards a more open Internet.

The idea is to deliver more frequent updates - and of course, reducing the engineering and coding efforts to keep an in-house browser up to date and secure from all manner of Internet threats. And this will likely be achieved; whether Microsoft's efforts will bring it a higher market share than the current 4%, though, is anyone's guess. It seems to be a usual Microsoft dilemma in that the first search on its browsers is for another web browser... And it might remain especially so without a branding change. Living in Chrome just sounds better than living on Edge.