While TUX is a HowTo magazine about Linux, we are not isolationist. That is, while you may have a Linux system it is typical that you will need to access files on other systems--the most typical being one running Microsoft Windows. A package called Samba is included in virtually every Linux distribution to make it possible for you to share files.

Linux systems now come with graphical tools to both access shares as Microsoft likes to call them and to configure file sharing in general. They are easy to use once you understand all the buzzwords and all the capabilities but seem a bit complicated because you have buzzwords of both your Linux system and your Microsoft system.

Audio CDs were a great step up from the 12 inch LP. You get more audio of better quality in less space. The only reall loss is you no longer have the nice 12 inch album covers to look at. So, great but can you do better than a CD? Well, the answer is yes and James tells you how.

When CDs were initially created a simple format was chosen to keep the cost of CD players low. Since then, however, technology has advanced substantially. That means that a compressed format can be used to store the information and the player can decode that information. The three formats talked about are MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.

Written by Jenn Verperman, this article originally appeared in TUX Issue 1.

While scribbling on the back of punched cards and stuffing them in your pocket protector may have been the norm in the 1960s and 1970s, the Palm has became the standard for a PDA long ago. Software from Palm allows you to sync your PDA with your desktop system if running Windows. But, what if you are running Linux?

A guide for when and how to use styles instead of manual overrides in OpenOffice.org documents.

Styles are the chief feature that make office suites more useful than electronic typewriters. In OpenOffice.org, however, styles are even more important than they are in other office suites. Most word processors offer character and paragraph styles, but OpenOffice.org also includes frame, page and numbering styles. Even more importantly, OpenOffice.org extends the concept of styles to other applications. Impress, for example, has a system of styles, whereas PowerPoint, its MS Office equivalent, has none. The same is true of OOo's Calc and MS Excel. Once you understand why and when you should use styles, you'll find OpenOffice.org's tools for managing and applying styles second to none. You'll also start to unleash the full power of OpenOffice.org.

How templates function differently in OpenOffice.org than they do in other office suites, and why OpenOffice.org's are better.

"Where are my custom formats? I spent hours getting them right. Now, when I open a new document, they're gone."

This panicked cry or ones similar to it are posted almost daily to the OpenOffice.org User's List. Half of the time, the problem is the user have not heard of templates. The other half of the time, the users are expecting templates to behave the same in OpenOffice.org as they do in other office suites--but they don't. In both cases, the solution is to learn how OOo templates behave so you can work with them instead of against them. Some template behaviors in OOo may seem quirky, and at least one of them is a bug, but all of them are worth knowing. Once you do know them, you should find that the way OOo handles templates reduces the chances of problems and conflicts and makes documents more portable.

Having already volunteered to make pretty signs for our big event, I had to learn how to do so on my computer--fast. Enter The GIMP.

A couple of months ago, I joined the organizing committee for the Moisture Festival, a series of comedie/varieté shows held each spring in Seattle, Washington. When I joined, the committee was working madly to get everything together for a few holiday benefit/fundraising shows. Everybody was diving in and taking on duties left and right. As with most theater groups, we were short on time and funds, but we made up for it with creativity and dedication.

Here's an excerpt from Point & Click OpenOffice.org that shows you how to create slides and slide shows that are sure to make an impression.

OOo Impress is a replacement for Microsoft's PowerPoint. Even if you're not an experienced presenter, Impress will help you create professional-looking slide shows.

Creating a Slide Show from OOo's Built-in Templates

OOo has a couple of canned presentations you can use. Bring up the templates, add your text, and you have a quick presentation, all ready to go.

Start OOo and select File > New. Choose Templates and Documents from the bottom of the list. Select the "Introducing a New Product" template. The basic slide show outline appears in the main slide-editing window, ready for your customization.

Want to take a quick photo of an image on your desktop? KDE has an easy tool to do exactly that.

I'm a KDE user. When I decided to give Linux a try, I felt KDE was the desktop environment most like what I was used to using. Using KDE has not been hard for me, but there are many things I have done over the years that I have to learn again. One of those things is how to do a screen capture. I am beginning to think the hardest part of using Linux is deciding which program to use. There are so many choices.

I needed an easy way to capture screens on my desktop. I looked at various programs and decided to use KSnapshot. KSnapshot is amazingly easy to use and offers all the options I need. Below, I am going to describe how to use it, but knowing KSnapshot is there to be used probably is the most important point of this article.

How to use the cross-platform program Audacity to edit sound files. [This article initially appeared in TUX, issue 6.]

Audacity is a cross-platform audio editor that provides some of the same abilities as store-bought audio editing programs such as Peak Express. This program has more capabilities than merely cutting and copying files; Audacity also can record from an input source, which goes along with mixing multiple audio files together. This is the same type of utility that Audio Production Studios use, although they use a hugely expensive program called Pro Tools.

Need to figure out where your CPU resources are going and if it's time to add more memory? Find out with KSysGuard.

KDE System Guard, or KSysGuard, is a program that offers you a look at how your system is running. Although many users may feel KSysGuard tells them a lot more than they want to know, a quick look at it can answer questions such as "Should I buy more RAM?"

You can start KSysGuard by entering ksysguard in a run box (Alt-F2), or you can find it listed in the K menu. On Kubuntu, it appears in the System sub-menu. Once started, KSysGuard displays four graphs. Figure 1 is an example of what should appear.