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The Wine Project, a compatibility layer that enables Linux and macOS users to run Windows applications, has officially released version 11.0. The headline change is the completion of the new WoW64 architecture, which is now fully supported and considered feature-complete.

First introduced experimentally in Wine 9.0, the new WoW64 mode now supports 16-bit Windows applications, removes the separate wine64 loader in favor of a single unified loader, and deprecates pure 32-bit prefixes created with WINEARCH=win32. Existing 64-bit prefixes can be forced into the new mode by setting WINEARCH=wow64.

Another major improvement is NTSync support, which allows Wine to use the Linux kernel’s NTSync module when available. Starting with Linux kernel 6.14, this significantly improves the performance of Windows synchronization primitives, reducing overhead in multi-threaded applications and games. Wine 11.0 also adds thread priority handling on Linux and macOS, along with new synchronization barriers in NTDLL.

As demonstrators flood Iranian streets in ongoing protests which started late last month, United States President Donald Trump has threatened military intervention, arguing that he wants to “help” protesters.

He wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” He has since echoed those sentiments in other public statements.

But ignored in his claims of wanting to help Iranians is a fact: decades of US-led sanctions against Iran, including ones that were toughened under Trump, have played a central role in the country’s economic crises that were the primary trigger for the current spate of protests.

The protests in Iran started from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on December 28, 2025, after the rial plunged to a record low against the US dollar. Shopkeepers shuttered their businesses to rally against rising prices in Iran.

The protests have since spread to other provinces and have snowballed into a broader challenge to the country’s leadership. The plummeting currency has triggered steep inflation, with food prices 72 percent higher than last year on average.

Somalia has severed all agreements with the United Arab Emirates, annulling deals spanning key port operations, security cooperation and defence, citing “harmful actions” that undermine the country’s unity and sovereignty.

After the Council of Ministers announced the decision on Monday, Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi said in a post on X that the move was based on “reliable reports and evidence indicating practices linked to the United Arab Emirates that undermine the sovereignty of the Somali Republic, its national unity and political independence”.

Somalia’s announcement appears to be linked to Israel’s recognition in December of Somaliland, a self-declared independent region in northwestern Somalia that broke away in 1991 but lacks international recognition, said Abdinor Dahir, an independent Somalia analyst.

“Many Somalis believe the UAE facilitated Israel’s recognition of Somaliland,” Dahir told Al Jazeera.

There. That's out of the way. I recently installed Linux on my main desktop computer and work laptop, overwriting the Windows partition completely. Essentially, I deleted the primary operating system from the two computers I use the most, day in and day out, instead trusting all of my personal and work computing needs to the Open Source community. This has been a growing trend, and I hopped on the bandwagon, but for good reasons. Some of those reasons might pertain to you and convince you to finally make the jump as well. Here's my experience.

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It's no secret that Windows 11 harvests data like a pumpkin farmer in October, and there is no easy way (and sometimes no way at all) to stop it. The operating system itself acts exactly like what was called "spyware" a decade or so ago, pulling every piece of data it can about its current user. This data includes (but is far from limited to) hardware information, specific apps and software used, usage trends, and more. With the advent of AI, Microsoft made headlines with Copilot, an artificial assistant designed to help users by capturing their data with tools like Recall.

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After dealing with these issues and trying to solve them with workarounds, I dual-booted a Linux partition for a few weeks. After a Windows update (that I didn't choose to do) wiped that partition and, consequently, the Linux installation, I decided to go whole-hog: I deleted Windows 11 and used the entire drive for Linux.