Setting Up Your Computer

The goal is to install basic Python software on your laptop so you don't have to depend on anything external from your computer to start programming.

Part 1: The Computing Environment

Let's setup your laptops so you can program whenever and wherever you want! You can even do this on your home computer. We've intentionally chosen software that is freely available and generally easy to install on a "normal" computer setup.

Step 1: Install Atom, a free (and popular) editor for lots of programming languages.

  1. Visit atom.io
  2. Click the big Download button.
  3. Run the downloaded file: AtomSetup-64.exe

Done! You can now run Atom on Windows. Give it a try.

Step 2: Install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), a terminal environment that will run the Ubuntu Linux operating system for us. You'll be able to download cool Python libraries and run Python from within WSL.

  1. Open your "Powershell" program by right-clicking on it and choosing "Run as administrator"
  2. Paste this command: 
    Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
  3. Restart your computer
  4. Open on Windows "Microsoft Store" and search for "Ubuntu 18.04 LTS" within the store.
  5. Click the "Get" button (don't sign in if it asks)
  6. When finished downloading, click "Launch"
  7. Once WSL and Ubuntu starts up, choose your m2XXXXX username and any password. You can pick an easy short password for ease of use. There isn't much reason to password protect this since it's just for our class.

Step 3: Install Xming, a program that lets you display graphical interfaces. Just visit Xming and click the green Download button. Run the downloaded .exe file and click through the install buttons.

Part 2: Directory and file setup

Directory setup. Before we begin, let's setup your Ubuntu WSL terminal so it starts up in an SI286 folder. Open Ubuntu on your laptop if it is not already open. Copy/paste the entire following text into your terminal and hit enter. 

sed -i.bak s/"@.h...033.00m.."// .bashrc; mkdir "/mnt/c/Users/`whoami`/Desktop/si286"; printf "\n\nexport DISPLAY=:0\ncd /mnt/c/Users/`whoami`/Desktop/si286" >> ~/.bashrc

Close and restart the application. When it starts up, you should see this (but with your username not 'nchamber'):

Atom Editor setup. Almost ready!

  1. Open Atom
  2. Go to File->'Open Folder' and go to your Desktop. You'll see an si286 directory. Choose that.
  3. You should now see "si286" in the left panel. Right-click the folder and choose "New File". We'll call our first program "hello.py" so type that in.
  4. Feel free to close all the Welcome tabs. You're ready to go!