A linux crash course for PhD Students, covering the basics of Linux and providing the knowledge needed to start with a distro installation.

1. PhDLinux: a Linux crash course for PhD Students
Davide Eynard David Laniado
eynard@elet.polimi.it david.laniado@elet.polimi.it

2. 2
Table of contents
 Introduction
 Which distro?
 Linux basics
 Our first installation
 And now?
 Conclusions
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

3. 3
Richard Stallman and the Free Software
1983: GNU project (GNU's Not Unix)
1985: Free Software Foundation
Free as in freedom
as in “free speech”,
not “free beer”
0. Freedom to run the program for
any purpose.
1. Freedom to study and modify the
program.
2. Freedom to copy the program so
you can help your neighbor.
3. Freedom to improve the program,
and release your improvements to
the public, so that the whole
community benefits.
1989: General Public License (GPL)
copyleft -> to protect sw freedom
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

4. 4
Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel
1991: “Just for fun”, Linus Torvalds,
a finnish young student, decides
to develop the linux kernel
Hello everybody out there
using minix -
I'm doing a (free)
operating system (just a
hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu)
for 386(486) AT clones.
Linus shares his code on the internet: hundreds
of users-developers begin to collaborate
1992: Linux under the GNU GPL licence
1994: release 1.0, 500.000 users
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

5. 5
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
• “experts” • “users-developers”
• hierarchy • decentralization
• isolation • collaboration
• sharing
• natural selection of ideas
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

6. 6
Linux distros
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

7. 7
Some Linux basics
There are some concepts you should be aware of, even before your
very first installation:
 filesystem and devices
 the shell
 apps and packages
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

8. 8
Filesystem and devices
 Devices: everything's a file
• Hard disks: hda, hdb, sda1, ...
• Network cards: eth0, wlan1, ...
• Other devices: usbdev, stdin, null, ...
 Filesystem structure
 Linux as a multiuser system: permissions and sudo
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

9. 9
The Linux shell
 the login
 help!
• man
• try to write ”commandname ­­help”
 main file commands
• ls, cd, cp, mv, rm, mkdir, rmdir, touch
 view/edit
• cat, more, less, vi, grep
 processes
• top, ps, kill
 archive
• tar, gzip, bzip
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

10. 10
Applications and packages
 applications are packaged, and (almost) every distro has its own
package format
• ours is .deb
 different tools are used to manage packages
• shell is power, learn apt-get, dselect or aptitude
 apt-get
• apt-cache search name
• apt-get install name
• apt-get remove name
• apt-get update
• apt-get dist-upgrade
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

11. 11
Ubuntu installation
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

12. 12
... and now?
Once the system is installed, you can:
 see what's inside it
 configure your apps
 install new software
Need help?
 Ubuntu Guide
 Ubuntu Forums
 Windows replacements
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

13. 13
Software configuration – old skool
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

14. 14
Software configuration – new skool
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

15. 15
Software installation
 Add/Remove apps
 Synaptics
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

16. 16
Synaptics: add repositories
 choose “partner” repository
 add: deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free
 see also: http://www.medibuntu.org/
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

17. 17
Software installation
 Internet software
• Thunderbird, Opera, Azureus, Amule
• GFTP, XChat, Skype
 Write papers
• LaTeX and Kyle
 Scientific software
• Abaqus, Labview, Matlab, MSC Patran for Linux
• Scilab, GNUplot
 Development
• Eclipse
 ... add your software here
• Still need windows apps? Try Wine!
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

18. 18
Matlab installation
or: here's how things work here ;-)
 get ISO at http://cdserver.cia.polimi.it/iso/matlab/unix
 the file is a multipart RAR archive: uncompress it with
unrar x Matlab_2007b_linux_mac_solaris_nov2007_3001.rar.part1.exe
 once you have the ISO, you can burn it or mount it on your
current filesystem
mkdir tmp
sudo mount -o loop Matlab_2007b_linux_mac_solaris_nov2007_3001.iso tmp/
 for the license file, remember to use the very last version!
(it has been sent to us by email recently)
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

19. 19
So, now?
Gaining a full knowledge of Linux in a couple of hours is pretty difficult.
We hope that now, at least:
 you have an idea about what Linux is
 you have some curiosity towards it
 you are able to get started with an easy distro
 you know there's other people here at DEI using it
... why don't we network and share info and help about Linux?
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI

20. 20
Conclusions
Questions? ;­)
Davide Eynard – David Laniado
DEI