In some aspects, such as in gaming, the Linux desktop has made enormous strides in the past few years. In others, such as accessibility, things have stagnated. At Open Source Summit North America (OSSNA), Matt Campbell spoke about the need for, and an approach to, modernizing accessibility for desktop Linux. This included a discussion of Newton, a fledgling project that may greatly improve accessibility on the Linux desktop.

When presenting the award to Haible, FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman commented on the significance of Haible's work, saying that Haible's work enabled free software programmers around the world to focus on the main, innovative portions of their program, thus facilitating the development of more and more free software.

Rust now supports a #[diagnostic] attribute namespace to influence compiler error messages. These are treated as hints which the compiler is not required to use, and it is also not an error to provide a diagnostic that the compiler doesn't recognize. This flexibility allows source code to provide diagnostics even when they're not supported by all compilers, whether those are different versions or entirely different implementations.

Version 8.0 of the terminal text editor GNU nano has been released. This update includes several changes to keybindings to be more newcomer-friendly, such as remapping Ctrl-F to forward-search and adding an option for modern bindings:

Command-line option --modernbindings (-/) makes ^Q quit, ^X cut, ^C copy, ^V paste, ^Z undo, ^Y redo, ^O open a file, ^W write a file, ^R replace, ^G find again, ^D find again backwards, ^A set the mark, ^T jump to a line, ^P show the position, and ^E execute.

The release also provides access to 14 levels of gray scale in xterm (up from four), as well as many bug fixes.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, code-named "Noble Numbat", was released on April 25. This release includes GNOME 46, installer updates, security enhancements, a lot of updated packages, and a new App Center that puts a heavy emphasis on using Snaps to install software. It is not an ambitious release, but it brings enough to the table that it's a worthwhile update.

The NixOS Foundation board announced on April 30 that Eelco Dolstra is stepping down from the board following the recent calls for his resignation.

Eelco is the principal author of Nix and undoubtedly a central figure in the ecosystem that grew around it. We confirm that Eelco showed no intention to be perceived as or act like the BDFL [Benevolent Dictator for Life] of the Nix ecosystem, or the Nix code base. To commit to that in a timely manner, he has decided to formally step down from the board.

The board also announced its intent to set up new, explicit governance for the project, answerable to the community:

We will appoint a constitutional assembly within the next 14 days. Its task will be to set up a new governance structure, run by the community, that is capable of serving the community's needs. Once established, we will delegate our power to institutions within that new structure. This entire process will take place in a public space, such that it's traceable for anyone concerned. We are committed to listening to everyone who may help with solving the problems the community is facing.

When it comes to security, telling developers to do (or not do) something can be ineffective. Helping them understand the why behind instructions, by illustrating good and bad practices using stories, can be much more effective. With several such stories Marta Rybczyńska fashioned an interesting talk about patterns and anti-patterns in embedded Linux security at the Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS), co-located with Open Source Summit North America (OSSNA), on April 16 in Seattle, Washington.

So, in my ideal world, we'd have an OS entirely without SUID. Let's throw out the concept of SUID on the dump of UNIX' bad ideas. An execution context for privileged code that is half under the control of unprivileged code and that needs careful manual clean-up is just not how security engineering should be done in 2024 anymore.