Introduction

When you buy and install some major piece of software like an operating system (eg. Linux or Windows) or an application (eg. Microsoft Word, Star Office, an FTP server, a compiler, an editor, whatever) by the time you get it running it's already out of date, it's got lots of bugs and it's a security risk.

You want to be able to use your computer for recreation and for work and you want to worry as little as possible about losing data, software crashing and without having some guy from Brazil, Poland or anywhere else in the world hack into your machine and start prying around and maybe deleting your stuff.

This means paying attention to how you set up your computer and the services and software you run on it. In short it means that you have to become your own System Administrator.

Security is:

Being able to access your computer, network and files when and how you want to.
Being able to control who else can access your computer, network and files.