The Most Popular Linux Stories Of 2013

Now here's the most popular news stories on Phoronix during 2013.

NetworkManager Now Supports Bridging, AP-Mode Hotspot
NetworkManager 0.9.8 was released today and while being called a "new stable bugfix release" it does introduce several new features for users of this Linux networking component.

Wine On Android Is Coming For Running Windows Apps
A port of the Wine software to Google's Android platform is being worked on.

Valve Pushes Out Half-Life For Linux
Valve has originally ported their original Half-Life title to Linux.

Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9
The operating system at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 4 is FreeBSD 9.0.

Portal Released For Steam On Linux
Valve's very popular Portal and Portal 2 interactive puzzle video games are now natively available on Linux!

Alan Cox Calls Fedora 18 "The Worst Red Hat Distro"
Alan Cox, the venerable Linux kernel developer presently employed by Intel and an avid open-source enthusiast, has lashed out against the recent release of Fedora 18. Cox calls the new Fedora release, "the worst Red Hat distro I've ever seen." Alan ended up switching to Ubuntu as a result of his disastrous experience with Fedora 18.

SteamOS Compositor Details, Kernel Patches, Screenshots
Here are more details on the innards of SteamOS along with some screenshots of the GNOME-based desktop environment outside of the Steam Big Picture Mode.

13 Reasons Linux 3.13 Is Going To Be Very Exciting
While the merge window for the Linux 3.13 kernel isn't even over yet, this next major kernel update is already looking to be rather exciting with a number of new features.

Microsoft Looking At Office For Linux In 2014
It seems thanks to the increasing market-share of Android devices and the rise of Linux on the desktop thanks to the many commercial Linux gaming initiatives that have been shared in recent months, Microsoft is being forced to take a serious look at Linux and a meaningful look at releasing their popular Office software for Linux in 2014.

C++11 & The Long-Term Viability Of GCC Is Questioned
Back on Tuesday there was a basic email by a developer volleyed on the GCC mailing list, which has since sparked dozens of responses and a rather interesting conversation about the future of the GNU Compiler Collection and its ultimate path and viability moving forward. The initial e-mail was simply an inquiry asking about an estimated time-frame for having full support of the ISO C++11 specification. Diego Novillo, a well known GCC developer and Google employee, has even expressed fear that GCC may be past the tipping point and could die out naturally.

NVIDIA Has Major New Linux Driver: Optimus, RandR 1.4
NVIDIA announced the 319.12 Beta Linux graphics driver announcement this morning. While the number may seem mundane, this is a very exciting NVIDIA Linux graphics driver update. It presents work that will benefit the agonized NVIDIA Optimus Linux users, provides new RandR functionality, and other new features.

Have a great New Year and see you on Phoronix in 2014!