August FAQ Update

We have upgraded our main FAQ page to support searching as well as the ability to list alphabetically or display the entire list of FAQs. This should help ease and speed up your FAQ searches for the right article.

Electrode continues his hard work promoting alternatives to Microsoft software, writing three of the four new FAQs in this update.

An Introduction to X Window Managers explains why these programs are needed, what they are used for, and provides a good list of available X Window Managers.

All modern *NIX filesystems support giving a file (which includes directories, devices, FIFO's, and anything else you might encounter) more than one name by one of two methods: Symbolic Linking (a.k.a. symlinks) and Hard Linking. Symbolic Links are special files that point to another file. A little like "shortcuts" on Windows, but they work at a lower level. Any program can use them as if they were the file they point to. If the file they point to is deleted, however, the symlink will remain but cease to function. Hard Links are another word for a filename. They link directly to the data. They work like symlinks, but if you remove the original filename, the hard link you create will still work. The data itself will not be unlinked until ALL hard links are deleted.

What are symbolic/hard links? explains how to set this up in *NIX. Symbolic and hard links for Windows are already covered in the FAT32 vs NTFS article.

If you want to run and compile *NIX software on Windows, then an Introduction to Cygwin is for you. This FAQ covers why you would want to run Cygwin, installing Cygwin, setting up X, and Making it possible to run Cygwin apps from normal command prompts and the windows GUI.

Sometimes it can be confusing as to how CD drives play CD music, especially with multiple drives and multiple cables. Do I need a CD audio cable to listen to music CDs? explains the three different methods of how your computer outputs CD audio, what you need, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method.