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 ...

There are many ways to move files between Unix and Windows. In my mind, they fall into three categories — secure copy (let’s not even think about ftp), shared drives, and file synchronization. Each ...

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 ...

When transferring text files between Linux/Unix and Windows systems, you may encounter issues with line breaks and file formatting. This is because Windows uses both a line feed (LF) and a carriage ...

Maybe you're married to Microsoft Exchange, but you secretly pine for open-source e-mail tools like SpamAssassin or fetchmail. Or maybe you're using Unix-based applications for some network services, ...

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 ...