CSC 360

Getting Started with Linux in BB 454

All of the machines in BB 454 have Mageia 2 installed as a virtual machine under VirtualBox.  Start VirtualBox, select the Mageia virtual machine and click "Start".  The machine will boot, and after a few minutes you will be presented with a Login Screen.  Enter 'csis' (without the quotes) as the username and 'bb454' (also, without quotes) as the password, and press enter again. Within another minute or less, you will have the KDE graphical desktop, which is similar in functionality to the usual Windows desktop. 

To shutdown Linux you can right-click on the desktop, select “Leave...” near the bottom of the pop-up menu, then select “Turn Off Computer."

There is a task-bar on the bottom of the screen. The “Star” icon launches the menu system, similar to Windows. There is also an icon for Firefox. The “Terminal” icon provides a "Konsole" shell, which is the bash command shell. You will choose “Shell” at the top of the menu to start the "Konsole"

To begin learning about Linux, use Firefox to browse to the Guides page of the Linux Documentation Project at http://tldp.org/guides.html and scroll down to the fifth Guide, “Introduction to Linux – A Hands-On Guide”. There are several formats available for either viewing on-line or downloading to a local machine. You should probably read the first three chapters of this guide in order to get a start with Linux. Read more as you have time.  The next Guide, "GNU/Linux Command-Line Tools Summary", will give you much more information about the commands available in the Bash shell.