Kernel developers are encouraged to send their changes in small batches as a way of making life easier for reviewers. So when a longtime developer and maintainer hits the list with a 437-patch series touching 859 files, eyebrows are certain to head skyward. Specifically, this series from Jens Axboe is cleaning up one of the core abstractions that has been part of the Linux kernel almost since the beginning; authors of device drivers (among others) will have to take note.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (chromium, grub2, httpd, kernel, libcoap, matrix-synapse, python-pip, and rust-pythonize), Red Hat (kernel and libxml2), SUSE (kernel), and Ubuntu (eglibc, glibc and php7.4, php8.1, php8.2).

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.8.9, 6.6.30, 6.1.90, 5.15.158, 5.10.216, 5.4.275, and 4.19.313 stable kernels. As is the norm, they contain lots of important fixes throughout the kernel tree.

In Unix-like systems, an open file descriptor carries the right to access the opened object in specific ways. As a general rule, that file descriptor does not enable access to any other objects. The recently merged BPF token feature runs counter to this practice by creating file descriptors that carry specific BPF-related access rights. A similar but different approach to capability-carrying file descriptors, in the form of directory file descriptors that include their own credentials, is currently under consideration in the kernel community.

Version 1.78.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes include a new mechanism for diagnostic attributes, changes to how assertions around unsafe blocks are handled, and more.

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.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium and distro-info-data), Fedora (et, php-tcpdf, python-aiohttp, python-openapi-core, thunderbird, tpm2-tools, and tpm2-tss), Red Hat (nodejs:16 and podman), and Ubuntu (firefox).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 2, 2024 is available.

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.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (nghttp2 and qtbase-opensource-src), Mageia (cjson, freerdp, guava, krb5, libarchive, and mediawiki), Oracle (container-tools:4.0 and container-tools:ol8), Red Hat (bind, buildah, container-tools:3.0, container-tools:rhel8, expat, gnutls, golang, grafana, kernel, kernel-rt, libreswan, libvirt, linux-firmware, mod_http2, pcp, pcs, podman, python-jwcrypto, rhc-worker-script, shadow-utils, skopeo, sssd, tigervnc, unbound, and yajl), SUSE (kernel and python311), and Ubuntu (gerbv and node-json5).

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.

Version 5.0 of the Yocto Project distribution builder has been released. The list of new features is long; see the release notes for the details.

This Mastodon stream from Lennart Poettering describes a sudo replacement — called run0 — that will be part of the upcoming systemd 256 release. It takes a rather different approach to the execution of privileged commands, avoiding the use of setuid (which he calls "SUID") permissions entirely.

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.

Version 2.45.0 of the Git source-code management system has been released. Changes include a new list command for git reflog, a couple of new configuration variables for git diff, the ability to drop redundant commits while cherry-picking, a number of performance improvements, and more.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (org-mode), Oracle (shim and tigervnc), Red Hat (ansible-core, avahi, buildah, container-tools:4.0, containernetworking-plugins, edk2, exfatprogs, fence-agents, file, freeglut, freerdp, frr, grub2, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, harfbuzz, httpd, ipa, kernel, libjpeg-turbo, libnbd, LibRaw, libsndfile, libssh, libtiff, libvirt, libX11, libXpm, mingw components, mingw-glib2, mingw-pixman, mod_http2, mod_jk and mod_proxy_cluster, motif, mutt, openssl and openssl-fips-provider, osbuild and osbuild-composer, pam, pcp, pcs, perl, pmix, podman, python-jinja2, python3.11, python3.11-cryptography, python3.11-urllib3, qemu-kvm, qt5-qtbase, runc, skopeo, squashfs-tools, systemd, tcpdump, tigervnc, toolbox, traceroute, webkit2gtk3, wpa_supplicant, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zziplib), SUSE (docker, ffmpeg, ffmpeg-4, frr, and kernel), and Ubuntu (anope, freerdp3, and php7.0, php7.2, php7.4, php8.1).

The Amarok music player project has announced the release of version 3.0, which is codenamed "Castaway". It is the first stable version using Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5, and the first stable release since the final Qt-4-based 2.9.0 in 2018.

The road to 3.0 has not been a short one. Much of the Qt5/KF5 porting was done in 2015 already, but finishing and polishing everything up has been a slow, sometimes ongoing and sometimes stalled process ever since. 3.0 Alpha was released in February 2021 and has been since used by many people, as have been nightly builds of git master available for various distributions. Now in the past few months, an effort was made to get everything ready for a proper 3.0 release.

Common usecases should work quite well, and in addition to fixing KF5 port related regressions reported in pre-releases, 3.0 features many bugfixes and implemented features for longstanding issues, the oldest such documented being from 2009. However, with more than 20 years of development history, it is likely that not every feature Amarok has been tested thoroughly in the new release, and specifically some Internet services that have changed their API in recent years are not available, at least for now. It might well be that getting them in better state wouldn't require huge effort, however, so if you know your way with Qt and KDE Frameworks and your favourite Internet music service does not work with Amarok 3.0, you are extremely welcome to join in and help!

On April 21, a group of anonymous authors and non-anonymous signatories published a lengthy open letter to the Nix community and Nix founder Eelco Dolstra calling for his resignation from the project. They claimed ongoing problems with the project's leadership, primarily focusing on the way his actions have allegedly undermined people nominally empowered to perform various moderation and governance tasks. Since its release, the letter has gained more than 100 signatures.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, java-11-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, libreswan, thunderbird, and tigervnc), Debian (chromium, emacs, frr, mediawiki, ruby-rack, trafficserver, and zabbix), Fedora (chromium, grub2, python-idna, and python-reportlab), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable, firefox, opencryptoki, and thunderbird), Red Hat (container-tools:4.0, container-tools:rhel8, git-lfs, and shim), SUSE (frr, java-11-openjdk, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, pdns-recursor, and shim), and Ubuntu (apache2, cpio, curl, glibc, gnutls28, less, libvirt, and pillow).