One of the questions that Unix users are sometimes reluctant to ask is how all the directory names — like /etc, /var and /usr/local — came about in the first place. Why did we adopt the particular ...

If you're new to the UNIX operating system, especially if you're familiar with Windows, you'll find that the file access control mechanisms might not be exactly what you expect. File permissions and ...

Addresses manipulating and maintaining files within the UNIX file system; creating and editing text files using the vi and ed editors; using pipes, redirection, and filters; using advanced text ...

People who have had bad experiences on Windows disks that performed poorly after they had become very fragmented often wonder if they need to apply some kind of periodic analysis and defragmentation ...

GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

Maybe its pervasiveness has long obscured its origins. But Unix, the operating system that in one derivative or another powers nearly all smartphones sold worldwide, was born 50 years ago from the ...

Click for a PDF of this and four other essential Linux articles. Generally not taught in any formal classes, troubleshooting is one of the things that most of us end up picking up the hard way. How to ...

The Unix operating system is one of computing's most significant technologies, providing the framework that the familiar Linux and Mac OS X operating systems were developed on. Unix can be a viable ...

In order to share files on a network in the past "classic" Mac operating system, you had to access and set up items in several locations. First, you needed to enable file sharing in one location, then ...