Many users just opt for the defaults and don’t think about the file system when they install Linux. But if better performance is your goal, it pays to do some shopping.

A simple command helps you switch on the afterburner for your hard disks and drives. hdparm improves the performance of your storage devices.

Are your multimedia applications receiving the resources they need? Are you using the optimum filesystem for your environment? You don't have to be an expert to find better performance in Linux – you just need to know where to look.

Backups are a common topic, but you’ll hardly hear anyone mention safe data deletion.

If you’re serious about keeping secrets, try hard disk encryption with DM-Crypt and LUKS.

Why reboot every time you need to access data on the other side of your dual boot system? We’ll introduce you to Captive NTFS – a free tool for reaching Windows NTFS partitions from Linux. We’ll also show you some handy tools for reading Linux partitions from Windows.