OpenTofu, an open-source Terraform fork, announced the release of OpenTofu 1.7 with new features and improvements. Since version 1.6, the first stable release after the fork, over 100 community contributors and OpenTofu's core team joined hands to add the requested features, such as state encryption, provider-defined functions, loopable import blocks, and an improved CLI experience.

Microsoft's newest release of PowerToys, a collection of sophisticated tools for Windows 10 and 11 users, introduces Advanced Paste. This feature leverages AI to transform copied content into a different format.

Istio is an open-source service mesh that controls how microservices share data, often integrated with Kubernetes to manage traffic and communication between services, but also capable of working with other deployment environments. It provides various functionalities such as traffic control, security measures (encryption, authentication, etc.), and monitoring. Recently, the introduction of Istio version 1.22 unveiled many interesting features, including an alternative for sidecar proxies, integration with Gateway API, incremental xDS for configuration distribution, and several other improvements.

When booting PCs from WinPE, you can run setup.exe with parameters and automate it with an answer file. This can partition the system drive without user interaction and skip the regional settings dialog. By additionally including an unattend.xml file in the image, you achieve a fully unattended installation.

This tutorial will teach you how to configure an EC2 instance to access an S3 bucket using the Terraform fork OpenTofu. The guide assumes familiarity with AWS and covers the essential steps, including creating an IAM role and policies and attaching them to an EC2 instance.

Passkey authentication can significantly improve security and ease of access. This blog post serves as a practical guide to understanding and enabling passkeys in Entra ID, Microsoft’s identity management service. You’ll learn how to register passkeys, set up devices, and test passkey authentication.

The Azure OpenAI Service is a specialized offering within the broader set of Azure Cognitive Services, providing access to OpenAI's language models. The service can be accessed through REST APIs, Python SDK, and a web-based interface, Azure OpenAI Studio. In this article, you will learn how to deploy and access the GPT-4o model in Azure with PowerShell.

KeePassXC is a free, lightweight, open-source, cross-platform password manager for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It securely stores your passwords in a local, encrypted database and offers autofill capabilities for web browsers and other applications.

Microsoft Purview integrates with Microsoft 365 applications such as Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, providing comprehensive data governance, compliance, and protection capabilities across these platforms. One of the standout components of this suite is the Audit Search Graph API, which is currently in public preview. It allows developers and administrators retrieve detailed audit logs programmatically, providing deep insights into user activities across Microsoft services. In this blog, I will explore the full potential of the Microsoft Purview Audit Search Graph API and demonstrate how to use the API through both PowerShell and HTTP methods.

Buildah is an open-source tool that helps build Open Container Initiative (OCI) container images. Unlike traditional container engines, Buildah allows you to create and manage images without a container daemon. Container images created with Buildah can be run in OCI-compatible container engines such as Docker, Podman, or containerd, orchestrated with Kubernetes. The latest release, Buildah 1.35, introduces several significant enhancements extending its capabilities. Key new features include the --add-file flag, which allows you to add files directly to committed images, the --sbom flag for generating Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) during the build and commit processes, and enhancements to the manifest push command with the addition of  the --retry and --retry-delay flags for more robust image pushing.

Canonical has just released Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Long Term Support), known as Noble Numbat. This release introduces numerous new features and improvements throughout the operating system. This post covers the key highlights.

OSDCloud is a free PowerShell framework for deploying Windows 10 and Windows 11. The tool provides simple methods for adding drivers and configuring settings in an image. After booting from a customized WinPE, either the OSDCloudGUI or an automated script initiates the installation.

Docker Desktop provides a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for developing, building, testing, and running containerized applications on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Docker Desktop 4.30 introduces an experimental phase to simplify the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) configuration by reducing the previously required two Docker Desktop WSL distributions (docker-desktop and docker-desktop-data) into one, aiming to improve startup time and simplify the codebase.

After capturing an image from a reference installation, you can deploy it to as many computers as needed. Multiple methods are available for this task. A common approach involves booting the target PCs from WinPE using a USB drive or PXE, and then applying the image with DISM or PowerShell.

The Wave terminal is an open-source terminal emulator with native AI integration. It is available for macOS and Linux, with Windows availability in the works. This article examines Wave and compares it to Warp, another terminal with AI features.

The latest version of Ubuntu, 24.04, is out with new features for multiple platforms. This article specifically guides you through upgrading to 24.04 on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) platform. Check out this article for a general upgrade guide for other platforms.

Microsoft Entra ID now supports external authentication methods with multifactor authentication (MFA) in public preview. In this step-by-step guide, I will explain how to configure and use third-party authentication for Microsoft 365.

Kyverno is a Kubernetes-native policy management tool that automates and enforces policies for validating, mutating, and generating Kubernetes configurations. The Kyverno team has just unveiled version 1.12, which introduces a host of new features. These include dedicated storage for policy reports, integration of Kyverno JSON into the CLI, refined policy exception handling with conditions, and other improvements.

In professional environments, most store apps delivered with Windows are of little value, prompting admins to remove them from the image before deployment. However, you should avoid indiscriminately deleting them, as some system-relevant apps may be among them. PowerShell can be used to remove the crapware selectively.