By Stephen Bucaro

Linux uses a whole different file system philosophy than Windows. Windows automatically assigns a drive letter to every partition and drive it finds. But Linux makes every partition and drive a subdirectory of root (/) partition. If you are a Windows user, you may get confused when you try to use Linux.

No matter how many partitions, hard drives, or floppy drives your computer has, Linux File Manager displays everything in a single directory tree under root directory indicated by a slash (/). Every partition or drive is "mounted" onto directory tree, and appears in File Manager as a subdirectory.

Linux needs at least three partitions to work, root partition, /boot partition, and swap partition. The root partition is mounted at startup. The root directory itself doesn't contain any files, just subdirectories. The /boot partition contains files used to boot system. The swap partition is used as "virtual memory".

When operating system needs more memory than there is available in system's RAM, it can use disk space to emulate memory. As system operates, data is swapped back and forth between RAM and swap partition. The swap partition doesn't have a mount point because it's a system file and is never accessed directly by user.

Note: Linux, Internet, and rest of computing world use forward slashes to form directory paths. Only Windows uses back-slashes to form directory paths. The back-slash also represents an ASCII escape character, resulting in all kinds of bugs in Windows programs.

By Stephen Bucaro

Are you a shareware junkie? Have you installed and removed many programs from your computer? This can make your computer take longer to start and run sluggish, or even cause reoccurring error messages.

During installation a program copies files to applications folder, Windows folder, and creates entries in registry. The problem is that when you uninstall a program, it may leave behind pieces of itself and entries in registry. Your hard disk and registry can become bloated.

To solve this problem, Microsoft licensed Install Shield software to establish a standard Install and Uninstall procedure. When you install an application on your computer it copies its own uninstall utility to your hard drive. This Uninstall utility properly removes every piece of program and removes every entry that it made in registry.

If an application does not automatically install itself, you can install it with Add/Remove Programs utility in Control Panel. When installing an application this utility searches application for a program named setup.exe. Programs that comply with Microsoft's logo requirement provide a setup program that lists application in Add/Remove Programs list and registers an uninstall utility.

To remove an application from your computer, use Add/Remove Programs utility. Just deleting program without using Add/Remove Programs utility leaves behind pieces of application and entries in registry.