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 ...

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 ...

In the first installment of this series, we looked at the basics of using the Terminal to access Mac OS X’s Unix core. What’s next? Well, when you visit a new place, the first thing you need to learn ...

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 ...

File systems in Linux and Unix-like operating systems like macOS can be mounted, unmounted, and remounted using the terminal. This is a powerful and versatile tool—here's everything you need to know.