emacs.org

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Rig rundown

Here we will discuss in some detail how to get set up for CIMIC.

Your “box”

Your “box” should be a desktop or laptop computer with a monitor capable of displaying at least 1920x1080. Don’t try anything less. Why? For one, the CIMMIC webpages are utilizing the Edward Tufte CSS, which will require at least 1920x1080 screen resolution to fit without scrolling and slider bar weirdness. Another consideration is screen real estate, i.e., you’ll want as much as you can get when you start coding.

Actually, you should have two monitors. Why? Because the study-coding workflow goes smoothest that way. Personally, I’ve got two 4K monitors running off of a Lenovo Thinkpad T14 gen 1 (8 cores/50GB RAM). But you can get by with less. The lowest Thinkpad model would be a T430, but maybe consider upgrading its RAM memory, as well as the hard drive to a much faster SSD. Then think about a docking station specific to your model in order to connect two 1920x1089 or better monitors. I have a few Lenovo Thinkpads that I got from Ebay for cheap. Starting with the Thinkpad T470 they support 4K monitors. But of course Apple Macs are fine, too. If you go with Ebay and primarily used equipment, you should be able to stay under $500: laptop, docking station, monitors, keyboard, mouse.

• Q: What about a Raspberry Pi?
• A: Sure, but get the very latest, i.e., nothing less than 8 GB memory. The latest (as of now) is the Raspberry Pi 4 available with 8 GB. It has two micro-HDMI ports supporting up to 2 4k-resolution monitors.

OS

The preferred operating system for CIMMIC is Linux, but Macs are fine, too. Windows can be made to work with everything we’ll be doing, but the professional STEM world is predominantly Linux and, increasingly, Mac. Linux is free for the downloading, by the way. I use the latest desktop Ubuntu version 22.04, which is easy to install. If you’re using an older machine with not as much speed, power, and memory (e.g., a Thinkpad T430), then you might consider lubuntu, which is a lightweight version of regular desktop Ubuntu. Make sure to go with a 64-bit version, though. 32-bit versions cannot use more than 4 GB of RAM memory, and much software these days depends on a 64-bit OS.

A typical OS install on older equipment

If you have a machine that is three years old or less, go ahead and install a modern version of Linux. I use the latest Ubuntu 22.04 on my Thinkpad T14, but for this tutorial I pulled out an old Lenovo T430s and will install lubuntu on it. From the Download page, it makes lighter demands on the hardware[fn:1].

• Download lubuntu from their site; choose the latest Desktop 64-bit version.
• Once downloaded, make a bootable USB drive[fn:2] . If you only have access to a Windows machine, follow these instructions. If you only have a Mac follow these instructions. If you have a Linux machine, e.g., Ubuntu, simply
  • download
  • make sure you got it; find in the file manager
  • open Startup Disk Creator
  • make sure it has your USB drive and lubuntu selected and click Start
• Once prepared, the bootable drive should be ready for your destination machine. Simply plug it into the machine while off, start the machine, and it should boot to a live trial/install version of lubuntu[fn:3]. At this point the whole OS will be running in live memory, the USB acting as the hard drive. This may take a while as it needs time to set itself up.
• Once the desktop has started, it should look like a regular running computer.
  • At this point you should connect the machine to the Internet by selecting at the lower right-hand corner the Internet symbol.
  • Once online, double-click the Install Lubuntu icon on the left-hand side of the screen.
• Work through the Location and Keyboard screens. Once you’re at Partitions, you have the option of dual booting (if you’re installing lubuntu on a machine that already has Windows installed) or you will do what I’ll do, namely, blow away what’s on the disk and reinstall lubuntu new as the only system. For this choose Erase disk and click Next.
• Fill out the Users section with your name, chosen ID, computer network name, and password. Do not choose to log in without password. Check the Summary and click Install. This will run through its install procedure, which can take a few minutes.
• The system will not reboot, this you do yourself. Once rebooting make sure the USB has been removed.
• Once back in, press Control-Alt-t to get a command line terminal[fn:4]. Here you will type in commands and hit Enter[fn:5]

> sudo apt update

> sudo apt upgrade

• This last command should bring down the latest update/upgrades for your lubuntu. It may take some time, and it may require a reboot. Follow that up with going to the menu (lower left corner), choosing Preferences, Apply Full Upgrade. This might do more installing and might require another restart. Do so.
• Now you have a basic Linux system.

Installing software

• Again, open a terminal with Ctr-Alt-t. With the up-arrow, your terminal should have remembered your previous commands. Redo the update and upgrade commands just to be safe.
• Go to menu and select Preferences, Software Sources.
  • Check Source code on the Ubuntu Software tab
  • Click on the Other Software tab and check ...jammy partner
  • Click Close
  • Say yes to update

Synaptic package manager

Synaptic Package Manager is a slightly easier way to get most of the software we’ll need. We’ll go back and forth between the command line and Synaptic to get new software

• In the terminal type

> sudo apt install synaptic

• Once installed, go to Preferences, Synaptic and open it, enter your password.
• In filter, type wget. If not already installed, install it.
• For more practice, let’s install Gnuplot with Synaptic
  • type gnuplot in the filter
  • check the box for gnuplot; it should be green when selected
  • agree to the additional packages
  • click Apply
  • kill Synaptic[fn:6]

Chrome browser

I use the Google Chrome browser. YMMV. We’ll install it manually from a raw .deb package for practice[fn:7].

• Go to this guide.
• Skip down to the section Install Google Chrome in Ubuntu Terminal [Method 2]
• At the command line type cd which will return you to the Home directory, your top directory. Then type cd Downloads to get to the Downloads directory.
• Copy and paste the command below from the website guide into the command line and run. This will download the Chrome .deb file into Downloads.

> wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

• Run the next command in the guide. This will install Chrome, as well as adding Chrome to your Software Sources, Other Software section for updates.

> sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Emacs

You are free to use any text editor you please, but the “official” text editor of CIMMIC will be Gnu Emacs. The main reason is that Emacs is used extensively in the upper echelons of the STEM commercial and research world. It is a very powerful piece of software. Some have called it an operating system in and of itself. It is maximally programmable and has its own built-in language called Emacs Lisp, which is a dialect of Common Lisp.

To install it on our lubuntu

• Download the latest from here into your Downloads directory. You want the latest, so scroll to the bottom. Right now that will be emacs-28.1.tar.gz at 71 MB.
• Before we unzip and install it, we need to install some supporting software. At the command line enter

> sudo apt install build-essential

• We’ll refresh again and get more Emacs dependencies with a one-liner (here two commands are joined with &&)[fn:8]

> sudo apt update && sudo apt build-dep emacs

• Once completed, open your GUI File Manager. On the bottom tray click on the file drawer icon.
  • Go to Downloads
  • Right-click on emacs-28.1.tar.gz
  • From dialog box choose Extract here.
• In your terminal cd into the emacs-... directory and enter this command

./autogen.sh

• in the terminal, type

> gcc --version

• From the menu select Preferences, Synaptic
  • In Quick filter type libgccjit. This will give a list libraries.
  • My gcc version is 11.2, so in Synaptic I chose libgccjit-11-dev
  • Once installed, close Synaptic.
• At the command line make sure you’re still in the emacs... directory by typing pwd
• Type this command

> ./configure --with-cairo --with-native-compilation

• Once this completes, enter this command

> make

• Once this completes, enter this command

> sudo make install

• Lastly

sudo make clean

• Now a plain-vanilla, bare-bones Emacs is installed, enter this to start it up[fn:9]

> emacs &

Soon we will start configuring and customizing Emacs for our uses. But to get a taste of Emacs wrangling, let’s change the default font by installing the very popular programmer’s font Julia Mono.

• Start by checking at the command line whether the version control system git is installed

> which git

• If it is not, enter this[fn:10]

> sudo apt install git

• Go to this Github site where we will “clone” a git repository
  • cd to Downloads
  • On the Github page click the Code drop-down and copy the whole https... line
  • Back at the command line type git clone then paste in the http... string[fn:11]

> git clone https://github.com/cormullion/juliamono.git

• Next,

Footnotes

[fn:1] If you have on 4 GB of RAM, then you don’t want the user interface windowing system taking up 2 GB of that.

[fn:2] The USB drive must have 4 GB storage or greater.

[fn:3] On my particular machine I had to interrupt the startup and change a BIOS setting to get it to boot from the USB drive. YMMV (your mileage may vary).

[fn:4] You might want to take this tutorial to learn your way around a Linux command line terminal.

[fn:5] Dont type >. That’s just meant to be the command line prompt.

[fn:6] FYI, if Synaptic is left open, you cannot install software from the command line. So it’s Synaptic or the command line, not both.

[fn:7] FYI, there are two other software install methods on Ubuntu, snaps and flatpak. More later.

[fn:8] If you get a screen asking about mail configuration, just choose No configuration, hit Tab to <Ok> and hit Enter. Repeat if another screen appears. Software will continue to download and install.

[fn:9] The & after the executable emacs has Emacs start, but gives you back your command line. Otherwise, that command line would be tied up until you ended Emacs. In any case, Ctr-Shift-t will start a new command line tab inside the terminal.

[fn:10] Don’t worry if you initiate an install for something already installed. lubuntu will just tell you it’s already installed.

[fn:11] This might take a while to download…