this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
229 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48363 readers
1590 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I started university today, I'm on a more general IT department. In first semester we have only one subject that is actually IT (rest is maths and english) that is about basic programming in C. And it turns out that university computers that we will use for this subject are all running Ubuntu. I planned to bring my laptop anyway because I want to have my configs, but it's still great that students who never used Linux will be introduced to it (for some basic stuff tho).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

I studied ecology, and first semester maths was done by a professor who only accepted our homework if it was coded in GNU Octave.
That was a fun learning experience for most of us who went into it with no computer background.
His (as it later turned out, correct) reasoning was that Matlab is a standard tool in Geosciences, but he didn't want to require us to buy it, so we're using the free alternative that can be installed on any Linux system.

It was my first Linux experience, and I got hooked. In my bachelor's thesis I coded a 3D simulation of groundwater movement, and afterwards I ended up in IT instead of ecology.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago

Octave FTW. Matlab is such a corporate cesspool

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

We used Matlab in 3rd year of high school. Teachers sent us link to download pirated version. I installed GNU Octave.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My uni provided a complete license for the entire MATLAB suite, but this piece of software is genuinely a nightmare to use. Every time i has to touch it, i wish i just had python instead

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

My uni also provided MATLAB, but I just used Octave instead for all assignments that required it and was never asked about it or told I couldn't.