Open Source Comes to Campus/Curriculum/Laptop setup

Goal #1: install an IRC client

IRC is a real-time chat protocol that open source projects often use to talk about the project and as a medium for users and developers to help each other.

• Windows
• OS X
• Linux
• Web Client

Goal #2: practice navigating from the command line

Many of the tools of open source development are primarily used via the command line. Let's get some practice with navigating the computer from the command line.

• Windows
• OS X
• Linux

(Note: If you want to use git on Windows, you'll need to use Git Bash, which operates with Linux commands. So you may want to familiarize yourself with them.)

Goal #3: install git

Git is a popular revision control system that is used by many open source projects. We'll use it during this workshop.

• Windows
• OS X
• Linux

Goal #4: practice using a plain text editor

Make sure you know how to use a plain text editor. If you don't have experience using one of those, ask an instructor for help installing one.

Our suggestions:

• gedit on Linux
• Notepad++ on Windows
• Smultron on OS X (download)

Success!

You are done with laptop setup!

Take a break, stretch, meet some neighbors, and ask the staff if you have any questions about this material.

Bonus material

Here are some things you can do once laptop setup is over:

• Take a look at some books on open source software.
• Find and join an IRC channel for something you are interested in.
  • on Freenode, try #ubuntu (the Linux distribution), #web (web development), #gsoc (Google Summer of Code)
  • You can get a full list of Freenode's channels here
• Learn about Google Summer of Code and look at last year's accepted mentor projects.