Linus Torvalds has welcomed the arrival of Valve’s Linux-based platform, SteamOS, and said it could boost Linux on desktops.

The Linux creator praised Valve's "vision" and suggested its momentum would force other manufacturers to take Linux seriously - especially if game developers start to ditch Windows.

Read the full thing at http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/384934/torvalds-steamos-will-really-help-linux-on-desktop

When the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy's fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billon ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it's packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code.

Read the full thing at http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-warship-is-powered-by-linux/

History is written years after the events it describes. But when the history of free software finally is written, I am increasingly convinced that this last year will be noted as the start of the decline of Ubuntu.

At first, the idea might seem ridiculous or spiteful. You can still find Ubuntu enthusiasts who exclaim over every move the distribution makes, and journalists still report founder Mark Shuttleworth's every word uncritically.

Read the full thing at http://www.datamation.com/open-source/are-we-witnessing-the-decline-of-ubuntu-1.html

Most Linux system administrators spend their days at the command line, configuring and monitoring their servers through an SSH session. The command line is extremely powerful, but it can be difficult to keep all the options switches and tools in your head. Man pages are only a command away, but they're often not written for quick consultation, so when we're stuck for some of the more arcane options, we reach for the collection of cheat sheets that we've curated over the years.

Read the full thing at http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/09/our-favourite-linux-cheat-sheets.html

Today we announce OpenZFS: the truly open source successor to the ZFS project.

ZFS is the world's most advanced filesystem, in active development for over a decade. Recent development has continued in the open, and OpenZFS is the new formal name for this open community of developers, users, and companies improving, using, and building on ZFS. Founded by members of the Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and illumos communities, including Matt Ahrens, one of the two original authors of ZFS, the OpenZFS community brings together over a hundred software developers from these platforms.

For some reason, Google seems to dislike Google Drive users who prefer Linux. I find this particularly strange, since Google's Chrome OS is based on Linux. Thankfully, the folks over at Insync not only provide Linux support for Google Drive syncing, they do it with style.

Read the full thing at http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/google-drive-linux

Samsung is releasing the code for it’s exFAT filesystem driver for Linux under the terms of the GPL. This is an important breakthrough because of the participation of both Samsung and the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers

Read the full thing at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/samsungs-exfat-linux-driver-now-gpl-compliant

Often we see or hear of people running out of disk space on their Linux systems and resorting to resizing tools or worse. Linux has the ability to extend (or shrink) logical partitions across spare space or even across additional disks.

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/features/resize-your-disks-on-the-fly-with-lvm

Today is Debian's 20 anniversary. This anniversary would have been impossible without a strong community of users and developers. That's why for its commemoration, we asked the Debian community what Debian meant to them. Below you have a selection of the answers we got.


Read the full thing at http://bits.debian.org/2013/08/20-birthday-debian.html

We the Cacti Group are proud to release the following:

Cacti 0.8.8b
Spine 0.8.8b


Cacti 0.8.8b Change Log

bug: Fixed issue with custom data source information being lost when saved from edit
bug: Repopulate the poller cache on new installations
bug: Fix issue with poller not escaping the script query path correctly
bug: Allow snmpv3 priv proto none
bug: Fix issue where host activate may flush the entire poller item cache
security: SQL injection and shell escaping issues

http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50593