A few basic tricks can liven up the command line and add a dash of color to your console.

Whether you are creating backups, rescuing data, or burning bootable CDs, dd and mkisofs help you handle the job in style.

This month we look at tools for mounting and unmounting storage media.

Rsync lets you synchronize your data – on either a local or remote computer. You can even use Rsync with SSH to encrypt your data.

Innumerable processes may be running on your Linux system. We’ll show you how to halt, continue, or kill tasks, and we’ll examine how to send the remnants of crashed programs to the happy hunting grounds.

The cron and at utilities help automate processes on a Linux system. You can set up automatic backups or even wake up in the morning with a track from your MP3 collection.

Practical tools such as cat, less, and head are convenient for viewing text.

If you’d rather rule the desktop from your keyboard, try the powerful Wmii window manager.