Eliana Willis

Microsoft / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysMicrosoft Lens retires in stages, ending scans by Dec. 15, 2025.365 Copilot app offers scanning but with fewer features.Adobe Scan, PhotoScan, TurboScan are solid Lens alternatives.I often use Microsoft Lens on my iPhone to scan photos, business cards, and documents. It’s a handy and helpful app for scanning physical items. But come December, I’ll have to rely on a different program for my scanning needs. That’s because Microsoft is giving the app the heave-ho. A multi-stage retirement In a new support page, Microsoft announced that Lens will be retired starting Sept. 15. But the actual retirement will come in stages. The app will lose official support on Nov. 15, at which time it will be removed from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.  Also: Microsoft rolls out GPT-5 across its Copilot suite – here’s where you’ll find itEven then, you’ll still be able to create new scans. However, that capability will go away on Dec. 15. At that point, you can continue to view and access previous scans as long as you keep the app on your device, but you’ll no longer be able to scan new items. Alternatives to try For those of us who used and liked Microsoft Lens, what can we use as an alternative come December?  There are certainly other scanning apps you can try when Microsoft Lens is gone. I’ve used Adobe Scan, Google’s PhotoScan, and TurboScan, to name a few. Though I still typically turn to Lens for my scanning, any of these other apps can handle the job. As usual, Microsoft is pointing us to AI, specifically the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. But that’s not the regular Copilot app. That’s the Copilot app you normally use with a Microsoft 365 account. Fortunately, the app and the scanning capability are accessible to anyone, even without a Microsoft 365 subscription.Also: 5 non-Google productivity apps on Android I can’t live (or work) withoutTo try this, download the Microsoft 365 Copilot app for iOS or Android. Open the app and tap the three-lined icon in the upper left. Tap Create from the menu, and then select Scan. Position the item you wish to scan and tap the shutter button.  At the preview screen, you’re able to rotate, crop, and otherwise tweak the scan. You can also retake it or delete it. When done, tap the checkmark to save the scanned image. You can store the scans locally on your mobile device or sync them with OneDrive to access them elsewhere. You can also view previous scans at the Create screen. More

ALLVISIONN / Getty Images ZDNET’s key takeaways If your Linux desktop freezes, don’t panic; there are ways to fix it. You can use keyboard shortcuts, virtual consoles, SSH, and other tricks. These tips can help avoid a hard reboot. I started using Linux in 1997, and since then, it’s been a rare occasion that my […] More

MF3d/Getty Images ZDNET’s key takeaways GPT-5 Pro delivers the sharpest, most actionable code analysis. A detail-focused prompt can push base GPT-5 toward Pro results. o3 remains a strong contender despite being a GPT-4 variant. With the big news that OpenAI has released GPT-5, the team here at ZDNET is working to learn about and communicate […] More

Debian / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways The latest Debian Linux comes with multiple improvements.Debian will no longer support old 32-bit x86 architectures.Debian supports essentially all Linux desktop interfaces.Debian Linux is everywhere. Debian may only be ranked fifth on the DistroWatch list of Linux distributions, but other Linux distros, such as Mint, MX Linux, and Ubuntu, are built on its strong foundation. The latest release, Debian 13, codenamed Trixie, released on Aug. 9. What’s new with Trixie?This latest version features numerous updates and introduces some notable changes. Perhaps the one alteration that will hit old-time Linux users the hardest is that Debian will no longer support the 32-bit x86 architecture. Also: 10 Linux features you should be using to get the best performance and functionalityThis change comes as no surprise. After all, Linus Torvalds bid adieu to the i386 CPU way back in 2012, saying, “I’m not sentimental. Good riddance,” got rid of floppy drives in 2019, and dropped 32-bit support from the Linux kernel with the end of 486 and early Pentium processors earlier in 2025. If you want to run Linux on ancient hardware, Debian won’t help you going forward. Instead, you’ll need to, as Torvalds has said, “run museum kernels.” Also: 8 ways I quickly leveled up my Linux skills – and you can tooDebian developers have also fixed a bug dating back to 2003 in this release. When an operating system is 31 years old — more than old enough to drink, vote, and get a driver’s license — these kinds of things can happen. However, Trixie will officially support the newish RISC-V (riscv64) architecture. The new version also ships with Linux kernel 6.12. This shift is a major update from Debian 12, Bookworm’s December 2022 vintage 6.1.27 Linux kernel. This release also features updated programming languages, including Python 3.13, PHP 8.4, PostgreSQL 17, GCC 14.2, and glibc 2.41. However, the Debian infrastructure still has trouble with rebuilding packages that systematically use static linking. In practice, that issue means the Go and Rust ecosystems will be covered by limited security support for now. For web browsers, Debian recommends and comes with Firefox and Chromium. However, while you can run other web browsers, Debian notes, “The high rate of vulnerabilities and partial lack of upstream support in the form of long-term branches make it very difficult to support these browsers and engines with backported security fixes.” So, take care running other browsers. Also: The 5 most customizable Linux desktop environments – when you want it your wayDebian comes with two major supported desktops: GNOME 48 and KDE Plasma 6.3. It also basically supports all other major Linux desktop interfaces. GNOME 48’s most noteworthy feature is that its dual Wayland and X11 screen compositor, Mutter, now supports dynamic triple buffering. This support means that whether you have a top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 or a low-end PC with integrated graphics, you’ll still get significantly smoother animations, noticeably fewer dropped frames, and more fluid transitions. On the KDE side, the interface’s fractional scaling works much better. That means if you have a high-dots-per-inch (DPI) monitor, your display will look better. This release also ships with a new “Cereratopsian” theme. This is an attractive, organic look based on Trixie, the Toy Story triceratops. Also: Think Linux desktop market share isn’t over 6%? This 15 million-system scan says otherwiseBehind the scenes, Apt 3.0, Debian’s default software package installation program, now comes with colored output, a new signature verification backend (Sequoia), apt-key deprecation, and simplified source management via the .sources DEB822 format. The result is that package operations are safer and more intuitive. The once-controversial /usr merge is now complete. The latest Debian also boasts such security enhancements as support for Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET), Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC), and Branch Target Identification (BTI). On compatible CPUs, Debian provides mitigations for Return-Oriented Programming (ROP)-based exploits, which are increasingly common attacks. Under the hood, the temporary files directory (/tmp) now resides on tmpfs by default. Confused? Don’t be. All you need to know is that it will make reading and writing to storage and your computer faster. Want to check out Trixie?You can download Debian 13 in multiple formats if you’re currently using a Linux distribution based on Debian. Also: 5 Linux distros I recommend to help businesses cut costs and boost securityOther distributions, such as Tails 7.0 RC1 and Gnoppix AI Linux 25_8, and more mainstream distributions, including Mint and Ubuntu, will incorporate the latest Debian in their next major releases. More

Windows 11 comes with its own screen capture app, the Snipping Tool. It’s perfectly serviceable for its purpose, but ShareX is better in just about every way.Like the Snipping Tool, ShareX supports various image capture methods. You can capture the entire screen, a specific window, or a certain region among other areas, as well as record videos. But what makes ShareX so much better is its powerful editing tools. With this set, the app is almost like having a mini-Photoshop at your disposal.Download: ShareXYou can add shapes, text, crop areas, slap on emoji stickers, and blur or pixelate key areas of a screenshot. Once you’ve finished, you can upload your finished content onto a variety of third-party platforms, like Google Drive and Imgur, directly. I remember using ShareX for the first time back in 2021, and it vastly improved my workflow.  More