Questions and Answers

I just enrolled in the course, what should I do?

Welcome! Take a look around the website, especially at the course guide (that also contains grading information) and other links in the side bar, which lead to information about individual labs, getting Linux for you and other course resources.

In particular,

My preferred lab is full. What should I do?

You should be able to enroll at least to the special lab 25bNSWI177x13 so that you can have the enrollment confirmed by the study department. It should be possible to register yourself as waiting in queue for a particular lab even when you are already enrolled to a different one.

Also note that if you do not attend any of the first labs without prior notice, we will move you to the special lab 25bNSWI177x13.

What kind of lab is the 25bNSWI177x13?

This is a special lab for students that do not regularly want to attend normal labs (thus typically also for students retaking the course).

The allocated time (currently Friday from 9AM) will be used for writing tests that cannot be taken on-line.

The lab will be held only for lab #1 (so that you can setup your environment) and then only during on-site tests.

GitLab?

Please, see our cross-course Q/A about GitLab here.

Important note: at the beginning of the course only make sure you can log in (same credentials as for SIS).

Can I use a different operating system?

Well … yes, but be prepared that some things will not work. And you will be on your own. We do not have the manpower to support various other systems that pretend to be just like Linux when they are only bad imitations.

This course is about Linux. Use it for your everyday work (other courses, photo editing or watching a movie) and you may actually find out that it is much easier and comfortable to use than other environments. If you approach it as a must-be evil that you need to live with to pass this course, (a) you might actually have problems passing the course easily and (b) you are deliberately throwing away a chance to broaden your horizons and learn something new.

The truth is that many of the tools we will be using are cross-platform. But Linux (or some of its ancestors) is their native environment where they perform the best.

Note that on-site tests will be performed on machines with Linux.

Can I use other distribution than Fedora?

Do that only if you know what you are doing.

If this is your first encounter with Linux, please, use the provided images from us.

If you need to use other distribution (e.g. you already use other distribution on your notebook), most things should work flawlessly. There are differences in package naming across distributions thus the packages names we mention may slightly differ.

The only big issue we still encounter is that some distributions still prefer Python 2 as the default (so that package python-something refers to Python 2 version of something and for Python 3 you need to install python3-something).

Some distributions also ship rather old versions of some tools so make sure you have an up-to-date installation (and if your distribution provides three years old software as the norm, seriously consider switching to something else for this course).

There will be of course differences when we talk about installation and package management but the general steps are virtually the same across all major distributions (and if you use some special distribution, you already know what you are doing hence you should be able to translate the commands to your environment).

What are the default passwords?

If you use disk images from us, following are the default usernames and passwords. For USB/Qemu/VirtualBox, user intro, password linux (and root with password toor). For the Live ISO, there is liveuser that has empty password (and auto-login should work).

Change these passwords as soon as possible. You can use the passwd command for that.

Will the labs be recorded?

No. Materials are provided in textual format.