Ashton Mills writes "If you're like me and use your desktop heavily for work, it's really important it serves you like any other tool, and helps not hinders you. It's not just about what you dump on it, it's how it works and whether it serves your needs. "

The default shell on most Linux operating systems is called Bash. There are a couple of important hotkeys that you should get familiar with if you plan to spend a lot of time at the command line. These shortcuts will save you a ton of time if you learn them.

This series has covered the essentials of installing Mandriva Linux and putting it to work.

This final instalment covers connecting devices such as printers and scanners, exploring advanced features such as the 3D desktop, having fun with games, and customising Linux.

Here's a short guide to getting your old clunker up and running again with a free Linux download and a reasonably quick installation.

One of the biggest complaints about Linux®, particularly from developers, is the speed with which Linux boots. By default, Linux is a general-purpose operating system that can serve as a client desktop or server right out of the box. Because of this flexibility, Linux serves a wide base but is suboptimal for any particular configuration. This article shows you options to increase the speed with which Linux boots, including two options for parallelizing the initialization process. It also shows you how to visualize graphically the performance of the boot process.

Countless pieces of software, protocols and complex interdependencies together form a system for which it is difficult to guarantee any particular property-particularly security. Even software specifically designed to enhance security can, at the behest of clever individuals armed with detailed knowledge, work to its detriment.

Like other OpenOffice.org applications, Writer has dozens of options available from Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer. These options allow you to adjust both the general settings of Writer and specific options for different kinds of formatting. Many are ideal for desktop publishing, and a similar set of options is available for web documents under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Writer/Web.

This Recipe will tell you how to install and optimize VMware Server, a software virtual machine emulator that lets you run Linux and one or more other operating systems at the same time, each in a separate window. In most cases this means Windows, though other OSes can be run as well.

Everyone knows that there are three things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company: politics, religion, and text editor preference. However, rules are made to be broken, and the recent release of Vim version 7 prompts just such an occasion.

This book is the comprehensive guide to Samba administration, officially adopted by the Samba Team. Wondering how to integrate Samba's authentication with that of a Windows domain? How to get Samba to serve Microsoft Dfs shares? How to share files on Mac OS X? These and a dozen other issues of interest to system administrators are covered. A whole chapter is dedicated to troubleshooting!

We have written a range of guides highlighting excellent free books for popular programming languages. Check out the following guides: C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, HTML, Python, Ruby, Perl, Haskell, PHP, Lisp, R, Prolog, Scala, Scheme, and SQL.