Plus Firefox has a new sales pitch for you, and how HTC's blockchain future is already fizzling out.

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• Linus back in charge of the kernel — And with that, Linus, I'm handing the kernel tree back to you. You can have the joy of dealing with the merge window :)
• Pine64 working on a KDE phone — It’s a confirmed news that Pine64 is considering a budget Linux smartphone running KDE Plasma.
• HTC’s blockchain phone is ready for preorder
• Firefox to suggest paid VPN service — A small, random group of US-based Firefox users will be presented with an offer to purchase a monthly subscription to a VPN service that’s been vetted and approved by Mozilla. After signing up for a subscription (billed securely using payment services Stripe and Recurly) they will be able to download and install the VPN software. Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android are all supported.
• IBM to Acquire Red Hat — Red Hat to operate as a distinct unit within IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team

It’s also been a big week for Linux on Windows with Flatpaks and a new distro running on WSL, and a flawless Ubuntu VM experience.

Special Guest: Wes Payne.

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• Firefox VR browser released — Mozilla announced back in April that it was developing Firefox Reality, a next-generation web browser specifically for standalone VR and AR devices, and now it’s actually here. Firefox Reality 1.0 is available today as a set of free downloads for HTC Viveport, Oculus Go, and Daydream headsets.
• Google loosens grasp on AMP — we want to move to a model that explicitly gives a voice to all constituents of the community, including those who cannot contribute code themselves, such as end-users. The change we are proposing is based on months of research, through which we’ve decided to follow the lead of the Node.js project and move to a consensus-seeking governance model.
• Mir reaches 1.0.0 — We’re pleased to announce the release of Mir 1.0.0. The main things to note with this release are support for the Wayland xdg-shell (stable) extension and improved facilities for customizing display layouts.
• Ubuntu 14.04 to receive extended maintenance — With the End of Life of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in April 2019, and to support the planning efforts of developers worldwide, Canonical is announcing the availability of ESM for Ubuntu 14.04.
• Running Ubuntu VMs on Windows made easier — Today we’re very pleased to announce that an optimised Ubuntu Desktop image is available from the Hyper-V gallery. This will give an optimum experience when running Ubuntu Desktop as a guest on a Windows 10 Pro desktop host.
• First purpose-built distro available for WSL — WLinux is at its core a custom Linux distro built from Debian stable specifically for use on WSL.
• Flatpak running on WSL — Windows Subsystem for Linux fans, rejoice! Flatpak can now ease your dependency blues. Sort of.
• Linus takes a break and a new CoC for kernel devs