It’s widely known that Christmas is a time for indulgence, goodwill to everyone, and above all a time for lists. So there’s no better time to compile a list for the year. Once you’ve digested everything below, you can plan your New Year resolutions. Let’s make next year different by sticking to them for more than a week!
We’ve trawled through our statistics and discovered our 10 most popular posts/series that saw the highest page views this year. Only stories published this year are included.
There’s lots of crackerjack stories that missed out from this countdown. This is therefore only a smattering of the coverage.
10. Synology DiskStation Manager
Let’s kick off with a mini-series which looks at DiskStation Manager, an intuitive operating system that powers every Synology NAS.
DSM is often billed as the most mature Linux-based distribution built explicitly for NAS. And its reputation is definitely deserved. It’s an impressive operating system.
9. 100 Essential and Must-Have GUI Linux Applications
Luke was really in his element compiling the finest GUI software available for Linux. The compilation largely reflects software that our volunteers use as their daily drivers.
Limiting the compilation to 100 applications was challenging in itself, and caused heated debated at LinuxLinks Towers. But we’re always happy to see passion amongst open source enthusiasts and even a splodge of diplomacy (aka gentle arm-twisting).
8. ASUSTOR Data Master
Our detailed review of ADM pulled in a lot of traffic from search engine queries. It’s a Linux-based operating system designed for ASUSTOR’s NAS devices.
The whole point of a NAS device compared to building your own is in its simplicity. Even if you’ve never used Linux before, ADM is simple to configure although it does take some familiarity to learn where everything resides.
7. Alternatives to popular CLI tools
One of the many strengths of Linux is that there are lots of choices. This series looks at alternatives to popular CLI tools. We published a whopping 63 articles in this series in 2023.
Many of the tools are classic commands that have been modernised in some way, such as written in a funky programming language with additional functionality added.
The alternatives are not necessarily drop-in replacements.
6. 100 Great and Must-Have CLI Linux Applications & 100 Awesome and Must-Have TUI Linux Apps
This is really two separate articles but heh it’s Christmas. Luke compiled these huge roundups of the finest command-line interface applications and text-based user interface applications. All of them are open source goodness at its finest.
Like its GUI counterpart article, the selection was largely determined by our small team of open source enthusiasts.
If you don’t find some undiscovered gems here, we’ll give you a full refund.
5. PhotoPrism – AI-Powered Photos App
We fell in love with PhotoPrism, an AI-powered photos app for the decentralized web. It uses modern technologies to tag and find pictures. The software can be run at home, on a private server, or in the cloud.
PhotoPrism is mindbogglingly awesome software. And that’s not an overstatement.
We cannot resist giving a shout out to Immich, which finished just outside the top 10. Immich is a self-hosted photo storage and sharing service with backup functionality. If you don’t want your photos firmly under someone else’s control, you should try Immich.
4. Awesome Linux Game Tools
Gaming on Linux continues to come on in leaps and bounds, even if the number of native games is limited. What’s better news is that some games now run faster on Linux than Windows.
Complementing Linux games are a wide range of tools that are designed for gamers.
Some of these tools have a wider audience than gamers, so there should be software here of interest even if you don’t play games.
3. Best Free and Open Source Software
One of our objectives of 2023 was to massively revamp our curated recommendations of open source software. We’ve updated nearly 200 articles during the year, and added many new ones to the collection. The feedback we’re received is hugely rewarding. Thank you!
This is always a work-in-progress as every year open source developers astound us with exciting new projects.
2. Machine Learning in Linux
Machine Learning has featured constantly in the tech press throughout 2023. The latest fad and lots of hot air. Probably, given that the term was coined way back in 1959.
This year, we’ve published reviews of 39 practical applications of Machine Learning from a Linux perspective, and were mightily impressed with many of the open source programs. The programs are all self-hosted so you don’t need to pay any hosting/cloud fees to use them.
I’ve already mentioned one of the programs explored in this series (PhotoPrism), but there are so many others that are genuinely excellent.
1. Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC
This series showcases the Intel NUC 13 Pro Mini PC running Linux.
The series currently consists of 9 articles covering things like installing and configuring Ubuntu 23.10 and Manjaro, power consumption, BIOS options, gaming, and lots more.
There are new articles in the works for 2024, including testing graphically demanding games on this tiny machine.
We’ve got lots of new features planned for 2024. If there’s something you’d like us to cover, drop a comment below. We love receiving feedback.
PhotoPrism is just uber fantastico.
Agreed, it’s damn good. It was the last piece in the jigsaw to fully migrate away from Google.
It was really sad that Intel brought an end to the NUC line. I love my NUC, it’s such a small, quiet, yet powerful computer. More expensive but definitely worth every euro.
I didn’t saw review of the great XnviewMP software that allow to view and convert about 500 picture format.
As it is a quality tool it deserve to be placed here !
Cordialement.
The site mostly reviews open source software rather than freeware.
Wow superb blog layout How long have you been blogging for you make blogging look easy The overall look of your site is magnificent as well as the content