Homework assignment HW1

Homework log

Remember to create a new post with a new topic “HW1” in your homework log channel on Microsoft Teams. Make a reply to that topic whenever do some work on this assignment. You can also post questions there. Your posts should provide evidence that you spent several hours doing meaningful work.

Objectives

The main objective for this assignment is to spend time familiarizing yourself with a Linux environment that you can either install or access from your own computer. You can use as much AI help as desired for this without needing to acknowledge or mention it. At a minimum you need to have shell access to your Linux environment (that is, you are able to run commands in a terminal window). You can use either a local installation of Linux, or a virtual machine (VM) running Linux, or a remote Linux server that you can access via SSH. On Windows, the easiest way to access a Linux environment is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). On macOS, you can try Docker or Multipass – see this Linux on macOS Claude chat.

You should also memorize the following shell commands and their usage:

Finally, make sure you understand and memorize one-sentence definitions of Unix and Linux, and what is the difference between them.

Cloud-based option

Instead of running a local installation of Linux, you can use a cloud-based Linux environment such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Microsoft Azure.

If you’re looking for a specific suggestion, here is a quick, inexpensive way to create a Linux box on GCP via the Google Cloud Console:

  1. Navigate to Compute Engine > VM Instances in the GCP Console.
  2. Click Create Instance.
  3. Region / Zone: Select us-central1 (Iowa) or us-east1 (South Carolina).
  4. Machine Configuration:
    • Machine family: General-purpose
    • Series: E2
    • Machine type: e2-micro
    • Provisioning model: Spot (cheaper, but may be preempted)
  5. Boot Disk: Leave as Debian.
  6. Click Create.

Acknowledgement: the above instructions were provided by Google Gemini.

Optional: Linux GUI

In this course, you will not be required to have graphical programs running on your Linux environment. However, you may find it fun to explore this. It should be relatively easy if you have a local installation. If you are using a cloud-based Linux solution, you will need to take additional steps. One example of how to do this is available on the on the Remote Linux GUI demo page.

PB version

The Professor Braught version is available as:

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