Tux Machines
Distributions and Operating Systems: Haiku, GNU/Linux, and CP/M
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 13, 2025
HaikuOS ☛ Haiku Activity & Contract Report, November 2025 (ft. Go)
This report covers hrev59111 through hrev59187.
The most notable development in November was the introduction of a port of the Go programming language, version 1.18. This is still a few years old (from 2022; the current is Go 1.25), but it’s far newer than the previous Go port to Haiku (1.4 from 2014); and unlike the previous port which was never in the package repositories, this one is now already available there (for x86_64 at least) and can be installed via pkgman.
The bulk of the work on this port was done by korli, building off earlier work from other contributors. He also made changes to Haiku itself to improve POSIX compliance and fix issues uncovered while running the Go test suite. Kudos!
PC World ☛ Bye, Windows: Which Linux distribution should I use?
PCWorld’s guide helps users navigate the overwhelming choice of approximately 250 Linux distributions by focusing on five main strains: Debian, Red Hat/Fedora, Arch, Slackware, and Gentoo. Debian-based systems like Ubuntu and Linux Mint are recommended for beginners due to their stability, extensive software selection, and user-friendly package management.
Eerie Linux ☛ Playing with CP/M – part 1
Earlier this year I wrote an article explaining how to use the CP/M operating system which has been the dominant OS of the 8-bit era of microcomputers. The article was well-received and some commenters asked for more. While I originally had other plans, a lack of time for a bigger project during November made me come back to my leftover notes and turn it into this follow-up. Today we’ll go beyond the very basics and look at actually making good use of this fascinating old OS rather than just using CP/M for the sake of it! Well, more precisely we’ll do the final preparations to start playing around with CP/M software in the second part.
If you’ve come here without knowing how to use CP/M, you may want to read the previous article which covers the basics: “A Gentle Introduction to CP/M”.