Overview

The Linux operating system underlies the HPC cluster at the NBI, and other clusters throughout the world. Unlike Windows and OS X, we usually interact with these systems through the command line. The course will teach the basics of Linux use.

Learning outcomes

• Have some idea of the architecture of the Linux operating system.
• Have some understanding of the organisation of the file system on Linux.
• Understand the general structure of Linux commands.
• Understand what plain text files are.
• Be able to do simple things like view and edit the contents of files, copy and move files.
• Have an overview of how computers are used to analyse data.
• Know who to talk to if you are interested in further developing your skills in computing and data analysis.

Full course syllabus

• Operating System basics (briefly). What is an OS?
• The Linux file system: mount points and links, the home directory, moving around the file system.
• File permissions.
• Shells (Bash).
• Structure of commands: Options, arguments, return values.
• The environment and some important environment variables.
• Plain text files. How plain text files differ from word processing files.
• Line endings on different platforms.
• Character encoding.
• More about files; filehandles, redirection and piping.
• A (very simple) data analysis exercise to demonstrate the use of most of the above concepts.