Theme: Unix (including Linux) Systems & Use

Emacs is a very powerful plain text editor used across the computer-using community world-wide. This course will introduce its basic use and explain how it can make your life dealing with plain text or program source code much easier.

This is a simple demonstration of the installation of a reasonably modern Linux distribution (currently OpenSuSE 10.3) on a standard, low end PC. There is an opportunity for extensive questions and answers during the software installation phase.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

The course is designed to take someone from having no knowledge of the Unix command line to being able to navigate around directories, and doing simple file manipulation. Then some of the more basic commands, will be introduced, including information on how to get more help from the system itself. Finally accessing remote computers by ssh and the most basic of shell scripts will be introduced.

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

No previous experience of shell scripting is required for this course; however some knowledge of the interactive use of the bash shell is a prerequisite (see Simple Shell Scripting for Scientists: Prerequisites for details).

This course introduces shell scripting in bash for scientific computing tasks. Day one introduces very basic shell scripts in bash which process the command line in a simple fashion. Day two covers how to write more advanced shell scripts in bash. Day three covers how to make one's shell scripts more robust.

At the end of each day one or more exercises are set. It is VERY IMPORTANT that attendees attempt these exercises before the next day of the course. Attendees should make sure that they have allowed themselves sufficient study time for these exercises between each day of the course.

This self-paced hands-on course gives a quick introduction to the Vi text editor, a widely available text editor for Unix (and other) systems. Participants work at their own pace using provided notes and exercises, with a demonstrator on hand to help.