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Your CS account allows you to receive mail at the address
<yourlogin>@cs.brown.edu. There are various programs for checking
mail, but pine is the easiest. To run pine, just type
pine in a shell. The menus are fairly self-explanatory,
but you can ask a consultant if you have any problems. You can also
set up your account so that you can read your mail from a web browser,
which you may wish to do when you're working at home
(see http://www.cs.brown.edu/system/email/home.html).
We will be sending you important notices via your CS email, so be sure to check it! Grades will also be e-mailed to your cs account.
There are a few browsers available on the department network, but we
recommend that you use Mozilla because it is easy to use, and it
performs better on Linux than most alternatives.
You can run Mozilla by typing
mozilla in a shell, or by selecting "Mozilla"
from the Root Menu, which you get by pressing the left
mouse button on the desktop.
Repetitive-stress injuries are becoming more and more of a concern as computer use increases. The CS Lab has excellent chairs and monitors to keep you safe, but you have to know how to use them. Please take a look at the CS Ergonomics Page ( www.cs.brown.edu/system/services/ergo.html ).
So far, you have been doing a lot of typing to get all these commands and their arguments running. Fortunately, Linux has a great feature to save you some time and some errors: tab completion.
If you type part of a command, file, or directory name that is visible from your current directory and hit the 'tab' key, Linux will either complete your word (if there are no other possible completions), or give you a list of possible matches. This saves a lot of heartaches with misspellings, along with some typing.
If you try out tab completion a few times, you should get a pretty good idea of how it works. If your prefix is really general, like 'l,' then you will get a huge list of possible completions that runs off the top of your shell. If your prefix is unique, Linux will complete your word and insert a space. (Try typing "rmd" and then 'tab.') If your prefix is part of a larger common prefix of numerous words, Linux will add letters until the prefix matches the longer prefix. Another 'tab' will then list all choices. (For example, "xem" and 'tab' will extend to "xemacs," but a further tab will show that you can pick just "xemacs" or a few other commands that begin with "xemacs.") Finally, if your prefix has no possible completions, the computer will beep at you and nothing will happen. This sounds really confusing, but give it a try; it's actually your new best friend.
Another really convenient feature of Linux is super-easy copying and pasting. If you want to copy something, either within a frame, or between two frames, simply highlight the text by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the cursor over the text. To paste that highlighted text somewhere, just click the middle mouse button over the destination. That's it!
Your shell remembers all the commands you have
given it. Press the up arrow to move through
previous commands, starting with most recent.
This is helpful when you are editing programs and
constantly running javac and java. (You'll see what these are in a second!)
If you have fooled around with Mozilla or any other programs yet, you may have noticed that you cannot use your shell after you run a graphical program in it until you quit the program. That is because the shell interprets your command to run the program as its sole duty until the program has finished running.
You can solve that problem by putting an ampersand ('&') after
a call to run a program that will display a window outside of your shell.
For example, to run Mozilla and keep use of your shell, you would
enter mozilla & into your shell instead of just
mozilla.
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