Linux, it's not Windows
A short introduction to the sub-department's
computer systems
Gareth Thomas
Overview

The operating system and Gnome desktop
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Using the command line
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Web and email
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The text editor is your friend
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The network
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Office applications
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Remote access

If you really want Windows
The operating system

Operating system is Ubuntu 10.04


i.e. Linux
The user interface you'll be using is called
Gnome and is fundamentally not too dissimilar
to Windows...
The command line

Linux has a very powerful command line
interface (the equivalent of the Command
Prompt under Windows)

All programmes can be run from the command line

Some useful programmes are command line only


It can be a very quick and efficient way to move
around and organise directory structures
One of the most useful aspects of the command
line is command completion
Web and Email



The systems come with several web browsers
and email clients preinstalled
Primary web browser is Firefox or Chrome
Primary email clients are Thunderbird or
Evolution, or you can use the web interface
The text editor is your friend


You'll find yourself using a plain text editor a lot
during your project.

Used for writing code (IDL etc)

Latex scripting
There are few different ones installed, which
you'll end up using will probably depend on your
supervisor

Emacs

Kate

gedit
The network



Linux (and Unix in general) is designed to
seamlessly work in a networked environment
Your home directory and all the file storage
space you'll be using won't be on the machine
you're working on
You can connect to and run programmes on
different machines using SSH
MS Office alternatives

If you find yourself needing to open MS office
documents, you can use OpenOffice



ooffice 'document name' at the command line
Under the Office submenu on the Applications
menu
Evolution is essentially an Outlook replacement.
Remote access

The AOPP systems are accessable from
outside the department using SSH
ssh ellinga.atm.ox.ac.uk


This can be done from Windows

"Putty" is a freely downloadable SSH client

"WinSCP" is a free SSH file transfer client
X-Windows can be opened a remotely
connected Windows machine by installing
Cygwin-X
If you really need Windows

If you really need access to Windows, it is
possible...



The Physics Department provides Windows
terminal servers
You'll need a Physics system login, which you won't
get by default
You'll have to provide a fairly convincing reason
why the local systems aren't adequate
Some basic Linux commands

File system commands
ls : “list” the connets of the current directory
ls –l –h : detailed listing, with sensible units for file sizes
cd : Change directory

cd ~ : Change to home directory

cd bob : Change to the sub-directory “bob” in the current directory

cd ~/bob : Change to “bob” in your home directory

cd /home/jupiter/eodg/bob/ : Use of absolute path
cp file1 file2 : Copy file1 to file2
mv file1 file2 : Move (or rename) file1 to file2
rm file : delete file
Some basic Linux commands

Utility commands
top : Provides real time information about processes running on your
machine (like the Windows Task Manager)
less bob : Displays the contents of the file “bob” in the terminal window
ssh bob : Allows to you log in to the a computer called “bob”
man bob : Gives you the manual page for the command “bob”
grep “hello” *.F90 : Searches for the string “hello” in all the Fortran 90
source code files in the current directory