Free software is generally defined in terms of the four freedoms defined by gnu.org. These can be summarised as:

• 0) Freedom to use the software as you please.
  1) Freedom to distribute the software either gratis or for a price.
  2) Freedom to study the source code.
  3) Freedom to modify the source code and distribute your modified version.

It's surprising that, while this concept of freedom has been around for over 30 years, it still is not widely understood outside the Linux...

Here's the dirty secret: directories/folders on a computer don't actually contain any files at all. Nary a one! In fact, directories are themselves files and therefore can't contain anything but data. They do contain rather unusual data compared with other files, and there are all kinds of safety checks in standard file-handling utilities that stop you from looking inside them as you would with any other type of file, but files they are all the same.

I think we have been seriously...

1) Start by searching your chosen forum. Someone may already have asked this question. If the forum has a FAQ, use it.
2) Don't post off-topic; find the right sub-forum for your post. If it's very basic and there is a "newbie" forum, you can also post there. Be careful not to post in a forum that is labelled "Not for support questions". And don't post in more than one section. Most forums have a rule against this.
3) Choose your post title carefully. Never use titles...

Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution and also one of the most distinctive. People who come freshly to it, after perhaps having used another Linux distribution for a couple of years, often experience a degree of culture shock. There are a lot of posts in the Slackware forum on this site which amount to "I did A in my new Slackware system and the result was B when most distros would have given me C. Why does Slackware behave like this?" If they then get the answer, "That...

In the early days of Linux, a lot of people found themselves having to build programs from source. Nowadays many users have never done this or wanted to do it. And that can be seen as a great step forwards because it means that Linux is now an operating system for ordinary people and not just for hackers and geeks. And given all the bad things that one can say about Windows -- the instability, the malware, the constant "phoning home", the unfair EULA conditions, the invasions of privacy,...