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 our thoughts on IBM's CEO stepping down, and Google's new open-source security key project.

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Links:

• Qt offering changes 2020 — Moving forward, Qt Long-Term Support (LTS) releases will be restricted to commercial customers.
• Use our stuff for free and sell your application? That's Qt.
• Qt LTS Releases To Be Restricted To Commercial Customers
• About “Qt offering changes 2020” – Fading Memories
• Nikolai Marchenko's message about TheQtCompany's presumed business model
• Linux 5.5 Released — So this last week was pretty quiet, and while we had a late network update with some (mainly iwl wireless) network driver and netfilter module loading fixes, David didn't think that warranted another -rc. And outside of that, it's really been very quiet indeed - there's a panfrost driver update too, but again it didn't really seem to make sense to delay the final release by another week.
• 10 Best Features in Linux 5.5
• Some 5.5 kernel development statistics
• WireGuard + Multi-Path TCP Were Merged Tonight Into Linux 5.6
• Indie VPN WireGuard gets the Torvalds seal of approval with inclusion in Linux kernel 5.6
• Linus Torvalds pulled WireGuard VPN into the 5.6 kernel source tree
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Adds WireGuard Support
• The Time Namespace Support Has Been Added To The Linux 5.6 Kernel
• Linux 5.6 Is The First Kernel For 32-Bit Systems Ready To Run Past Year 2038
• USB4 Support Lands In The Linux 5.6 Kernel
• Staging Changes Lighten The Linux 5.6 Kernel By More Than Thirty Thousand Lines
• Thunderbird’s New Home — As of today, the Thunderbird project will be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, MZLA Technologies Corporation.
• Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest
• Ginni Rometty is out as IBM CEO — Jim Whitehurst, the CEO of Red Hat — which IBM acquired last year in a $34 billion megadeal — will become IBM's president on the same day.
• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty to step down — Under her tenure, IBM experienced 22 consecutive quarters of sales declines that ended in 2018. In the company’s latest quarter, sales dropped 3.9% year-over-year to $18 billion.
• IBM Names Arvind Krishna CEO, Replacing Ginni Rometty
• OpenSK: a fully open-source security key implementation — OpenSK, an open-source implementation for security keys written in Rust that supports both FIDO U2F and FIDO2 standards.