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 ...

One of the ways to determine how useful a directory and its contents are or to produce a summary that gives you a sense of what the contents are about is to collect statistics on the number of files, ...

When Apple announced the release of Mac OS X, many Mac users were stunned: here was a new operating system based on the venerable Unix, which, they feared, would call into question the Mac’s legendary ...

Lifehacker reader Michael writes in with a nifty tip that was lurking in our comments all along, but deserves to see the bright light of posting. If you're already using the Unix-like Cygwin, it's an ...

Cron is nice and all, but don't forget about its cousin at. When I first started using Linux, it was like being tossed into the deep end of the UNIX pool. You were expected to use the command line ...

Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a contributing author to MacFixIt since the spring of 2008. One of his passions is troubleshooting Mac problems and making the best use of Macs ...

A couple of days ago we discussed some problems that could arise with sizing files with HFS compression. This problem basically arises from there being a lack of consistency in the various utilities ...

A long time ago, when people dialed (as in telephones) into Unix machines in some closet or college campus, they used a command called “w” to see who was also on the machine. You can use this command ...

The Windows Command Prompt certainly isn't the most friendly terminal around, and if you're coming from a UNIX background, it can feel like moving from a Ferrari to Fred Flintstone's car. Luckily, ...