Many files on a Linux system are files that are human readable and can be viewed as text. For example, shell scripts are just simple text files, as well as many of the important configuration files that can be edited by hand. This is why Linux provides many ways of editing and viewing text files, but here I'll concentrate on cat and less.

This article explains 2 simple commands that most people want to know when they start using Linux. They are finding the size of a directory and finding the amount of free disk space that exists on your machine. The command you would use to find the directory size is ' du '. And to find the free disk space you could use ' df '.

I shall explain how to setup PPP on your Linux machine, so that you can connect to the Internet using an external modem and a Dialup connection. This article explains the setup for the superuser alone (Not normal users).

There's a file called /etc/fstab in your Linux system. Learn what its contents mean and how it's used in conjunction with the mount command. When you learn to understand the fstab file, you'll be able to edit its contents yourself, too.

If you can't access some of the files on your very own Linux system, it's usually because of misconfigured file access permissions. If you are the only user on your Linux box, you may be wondering what's the point of having all these permissions (or lack thereof) that restrict your access to your very own penguin OS. However, before pulling your hair off, you must keep in mind Linux is designed to...

I shall list the Linux equivalent of the Windows COM ports. This information is generally found in the HowTo section, but if you haven't found it there, here it is for quick reference.

For those of you'll who have no idea what Redirection means, let me explain it in a few words. Whenever you run a program you get some output at the shell prompt. In case you don't want that output to appear in the shell window, you can redirect it elsewhere. you can make the output go into a file...or maybe go directly to the printer.. or you could make it disappear :)

Many Linux commands print their output to screen. For example, ls does this when it lists the contents of a directory: you see the output, the directory listing, on your screen. cat does the same: it concatenates a file and sends the results to your screen, and thus you can see the file's contents. But the screen isn't the only place where the commands can print their output because you can...

This article explains setting up of PCI Creative Ensonic 1371 soundcard . You can either make Linux detect the PCI soundcard using its default soundcard drivers OR use 3rd party drivers to make the whole job easy. I have used the 3rd party drivers called ALSA drivers which are very popular.

Basically Linux can access (after mounting) any partition, whose filesystem it can recognize (e.g. Fat 32, Ext2). Windows 95/98 partitions are Fat32 partitions and these can be accessed through Linux with some settings. This article helps you do that. Once you have done that, you can save your work on these partitions and also access all your data from these partitions.

Maybe you've already noticed that the package containing the source code of the program has a tar.gz or a tar.bz2 extension. This means that the package is a compressed tar archive, also known as a tarball. When making the package, the source code and the other needed files were piled together in a single tar archive, hence the tar extension. After piling them all together in the tar archive, the...

This article deals with what action is to be taken (during a reboot) after a power failure or an incomplete shutdown of a Linux system due to any reason. This problem seems to be very common since many newcomers install Linux and get all the various softwares/hardwares working under Linux and suddenly one day the power fails. And there after they are totally clueless as to what to do ..since they...

Scheduling of tasks under Linux is an extremely powerful procedure which is used by almost everyone. Scheduling of tasks basically means running whichever program you want at a particular time without having to manually be present at the machine at that time. Linux will run that program for you at that time. In this article I shall explain the simplest way to schedule tasks using the simple...

One of the problems with developed programs, is that they tend to grow larger and larger, bringing up overall compilation and linking time to a large figure, and polluting out makefile, and the directory where we placed the source files. The first time a program we write reaches this state, is normally when we look for a different way to manage our projects.It is this point where we start thinking...

This series 'Using Emacs' shall explain how to make effective use of Emacs. There are books that are about 1k pages thick that teach you to use Emacs.They not only cost a lot but also overwhelm you with unnecessary capabilites of Emacs (atleast for newbies).