Linux

[anders34]

I have a PC, so do I have to download something like Ubuntu in order to run Linux, or is that what SageMathCloud is for, so we don't have download things like that?

[quantheory]

If your computers only have Windows installed, you should probably use SageMathCloud for the majority of this course.

Most of the tools we cover are also available on Windows in some form. However, most tools targeted toward high-performance scientific computing are targeted toward "Unix-like" operating systems, which nowadays means not Windows, but almost anything else. I can only speak for myself, but I also have much, much less experience with using the versions of these tools for Windows; I'm betting that if you get stuck, it's much more likely that we will be able to help you if you either use SageMathCloud or use Linux or OS X.

[cswiercz]

@anders34 As I mentioned in lecture on Tuesday in lecture the only computing platform you will need for this course is SageMathCloud. In order to access SageMathCloud (SMC) all you need is a web browser.

Part of the reason why we are using SMC is so that we don't have to worry about installing things.

That being said, you're welcome to try to set up your own computing environment. However, myself and the TAs @quantheory and @mvelegar will not answer questions regarding installation and configuration on a personal machine. This is because

• installing some of this software can be tricky,
• learning how to install this software is not within the scope of the course,
• we have plenty of more interesting things to learn in the class!

Setting up and getting used to a Unix/Linux compute environment is a good skill to have since some jobs will not use Windows or OSX. SMC let's us dive right into the interesting stuff in this course.