Best of The New Stack — February 2026

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    Article
    Avatar of newstackThe New Stack·13w

    HackerOS is what a Linux enthusiast’s OS should be

    HackerOS is a Debian-based Linux distribution with seven specialized editions targeting regular users, gamers, and cybersecurity enthusiasts. It ships with KDE Plasma 6.5.4, Wayland, and ZSH shell, offering features like case-insensitive command completion and custom hacker-themed terminal commands. The distribution includes gaming support via Steam and GOverlay, optional performance kernels (XanMod, Liquorix), and variants for different desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, Xfce) and use cases (NVIDIA GPUs, cybersecurity tools, LTS). Despite some localization issues mixing English and Polish, plus occasional broken scripts, it provides a user-friendly experience with interesting developer-focused additions.

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    Article
    Avatar of newstackThe New Stack·15w

    50 years ago, a young Bill Gates took on the ‘software pirates’

    Bill Gates' 1976 "Open Letter to Hobbyists" complained about software piracy of Altair BASIC, sparking a decades-long conflict between proprietary software advocates and the hacker community. The letter, written when Gates was 20, argued that 90% of users hadn't paid for BASIC and that piracy stifled software development. The hobbyist community responded by creating free alternatives like Tiny BASIC and eventually laid the groundwork for the Free Software Movement (1983) and Open Source definition (1998). Despite initial resistance from figures like Steve Jobs, open source ultimately became mainstream, with Apple adopting it for Safari by 2003.

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    Article
    Avatar of newstackThe New Stack·14w

    Memory-Safe Jule language emerges as C/C++ alternative

    Jule is an emerging open source systems programming language designed as a memory-safe alternative to C/C++. It combines Go's simplicity with C-level performance, offering first-class C/C++ interoperability and compile-time safety features. The language uses an immutable-by-default model, compiles to C++ as an intermediate representation, and performs runtime checks for boundary violations while adding static compile-time analysis. Though still in beta since 2022, Jule addresses growing government and industry demands for memory-safe languages in critical infrastructure. Analysts note it lacks standardization and tooling for enterprise adoption but praise its technical approach to balancing safety, performance, and simplicity.

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