CS Resources—UNIX


This information is targeted primarily at CS 241, 230, 234, and other students, who are frequently encountering Unix for the first time. If you have already used Unix for a UW CS course, most of this information should be redundant. Learning Unix is an ongoing process, however, so many students may find this information useful even after completing several Unix courses.

Unix Tutorials

Unix Labs

These labs cover some additional topics (with a little overlap) that may be helpful.

Common Difficulties

The following is a bit of additional documentation for commands that frequently cause problems for students.

Editors

Do not use Pico (or nano) to do your CS assignments! Many people find Pico to be quite useful for small jobs like creating a .forward file or similar, but it is quite inappropriate for large CS projects.

Here are some links to pages with information about Emacs, a popular editor which is recommended for CS assignments.

Here are some links to pages with information about VI and Vim, other popular editors which many people find quite useful.

No serious computer scientist looks down upon anybody else for using a different editor from their own personal favourite.

Additional Links

These are links to various pages, some from other institutions, that may be helpful in helping to learn more advanced Unix tools.