Plus, we try out Element’s new voice messages and share our thoughts.

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• This week in KDE — The KDE Project released today KDE Gear 21.08 as the newest series of their open-source software suite for the KDE Plasma desktop environment and other projects.
• KDE Gear 21.08 Brings Improvements to Dolphin, Konsole, Okular, and Many Other KDE Apps
• KDE Plasma Introduces A New Overview Effect, Many Wayland Fixes - Phoronix
• #6 Sharing, Caring · This Week in GNOME
• Ubuntu 21.10 Likely Sticking To The GNOME 40 Desktop — Ideally we would have updated to 41 but feature freeze is today and we didn’t really have the resources available for the update.
• MATE 1.26 Desktop Released With Some Wayland Support — After one and a half years in development of MATE 1.26 as a fork of the GNOME 2 desktop components, this release is now available with initial Wayland support and more.
• Element introduces Voice Messages — This has been one of our oldest and most upvoted feature requests ever, so we are incredibly happy to unleash our first version of it at last.
• Join the Jupiter Broadcasting Matrix Server
• Tenacity Update
• LINUX Unplugged 419: What’s Cookin’ at System76
• Launch Configurable Keyboard | System76 — The Launch Configurable Keyboard is engineered to be comfortable, fully customizable, and make your workflow more efficient.

Plus Google adds its weight behind Rust in the Linux Kernel, and the new security features landing in WSL2.

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• Dell to spin out remaining VMware stake, cements Friends With Benefits status for at least five years — The proposed transaction has been pitched as delivering value for shareholders, both in the short term and once the two corporations have less complicated structures that will let them compete more aggressively.
• Dell Technologies Announces Planned VMware Spin-Off — Under terms of the planned spin-off, VMware will distribute a special cash dividend of $11.5 - $12 billion to all VMware shareholders, including Dell Technologies.
• Dell Buys EMC For $67B In Largest Deal In Tech History
• COSMIC to Arrive in June Release of Pop!_OS 21.04 — We’re providing a honed desktop user experience in Pop!_OS through our GNOME-based desktop environment: COSMIC. It’s a refined solution that makes the desktop easier to use, yet more powerful and efficient for our users through customization.
• There’s no place like GNOME: System 76 introduces COSMIC desktop GUI for its Pop!_OS Linux — System76 said that it studied user behaviour and sought to refine key elements of the desktop accordingly.
• pop-os/cosmic: — Computer Operating System Main Interface Components
• Carl Richell on Twitter — Yes, indeed. Pop!_Shell will remain a separate extension.
• Carl Richell on Twitter — Yes, tiling will remain a separate extension and can be used on other distros. COMIC can as well.
• Carl Richell on Twitter — The is an extension that creates a unique GNOME UX while maintaining compatibility with GNOME and the GNOME app ecosystem and HIG.
• Carl Richell on Twitter — Pop with the COSMIC desktop.
• Carl Richell on Twitter — We’re currently developing and testing on X and Pop 21.04 will default to X as well. However, we may be able to shift over to Wayland for future releases with the recent nvidia news about Wayland driver support.
• Google backs effort to bring Rust to the Linux kernel — "We feel that Rust is now ready to join C as a practical language for implementing the kernel."
• Google Supports Getting Rust Into The Linux Kernel
• HN: Linus Torvalds on Rust support in kernel
• Linux 5.12 Diverted From Release To Allow An Extra Week Of Testing — Due to still a number of fixes landing this week, .Linus Torvalds decided to be safe and go for the extra round of testing.
• The 12 Most Interesting Changes Of Linux 5.12
• A bumpy 5.12 is due for release
• Element Matrix Services launches bridging for Microsoft Teams — A single Microsoft Teams Bridge supports unlimited users across unlimited channels. Pricing is based on the number of active users using the bridge from MS Teams, at a cost of $0.50 per user per month. Traffic from Element (or any other Matrix-based client) is free.
• HN: Will this bridge be be open source?
• Servicing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 Linux kernel — We’ve just shipped the 5.10.16.3 WSL 2 Linux kernel version to Windows Insiders which brings exciting new changes: Support for the LUKS disk encryption, and some long-awaited bug fixes.
• Microsoft Docs: Release Notes for WSL kernel
• microsoft/WSL: Issues found on WSL
• Hangover 0.6.5 Released For Running Windows Software On ARM64, POWER — Wednesday's release of Hangover 0.6.5 now allows for starting QEMU automatically if needed.

Plus the facts around RMS’s return to the FSF board, and our analysis of the situation.

Special Guest: Neil McGovern.

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• GNOME 40 Release Notes — GNOME 40 is the latest version of GNOME, and is the result of 6 months’ hard work by the GNOME community. It contains major new features, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. In total, the release incorporates 24571 changes, made by approximately 822 contributors.
• Feeling brave? GNOME 40 is here and you can have a poke around in the Fedora 34 beta
• GNOME 40
• GNOME 3.38.5 Released with Support for Handling Monitor Changes During Screencasts — Coming a month after the GNOME 3.38.4 point release the GNOME 3.38.5 update is here with more bug fixes and various improvements to make the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment series more stable, secure, and reliable.
• Forthcoming OpenSSL release — This release will be made available on Thursday 25th March 2021 between 1300-1700 UTC.
• CVE-2021-3450: CA certificate check bypass with X509_V_FLAG_X509_STRICT — Starting from OpenSSL version 1.1.1h a check to disallow certificates in the chain that have explicitly encoded elliptic curve parameters was added as an additional strict check.
• Cloud CPU Benchmarking Report | Linode
• Run Windows on Linode
• RMS is Back — Free software advocate Richard Stallman is rejoining the board of the Free Software Foundation.
• An open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions
• An open letter in support of Richard M. Stallman
• Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board | Ars Technica
• Statement on the Re-election of Richard Stallman to the FSF Board | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Free Software Community Condemns Richard Stallman’s Reinstatement to FSF Board of Directors
• Richard Stallman returns to the Free Software Foundation
• SUSE joins open source bodies calling for Stallman to go
• From PS5 to Ford F-150: How a global chip shortage is 'impacting everything' — The biggest news in the automotive industry right now isn't new electric vehicles or Tesla CEO Elon Musk's latest comments. It's a major semiconductor shortage that's hurting automakers across the globe.
• [Video] How The Global Computer Chip Shortage Happened