This page covers two major topics:

We highly recommend you install the required software on your own machine.

Installing Native Tools For Your Home Environment

Please take the time to read the following important notice before looking for tools for your home environment.

Like most other computer science courses at ANU, this course is designed on the assumption that you will use the environment provided by ANU (physically or virtually). The virtual and physical laboratory environment is supported by ANU technical staff and we have done our best to ensure that environment works well in every respect. When the lab systems are not working, you should inform your tutor and/or report the problem via the ANU Service Desk.

All practical work for this course can be completed using freely available tools that run on most operating systems. For your convenience, we provide basic installation instructions below. Please understand that your personal computing environment is not supported by the ANU.

We cannot support your personal environment because each environment may differ in ways that are outside of our control.

If you plan to use your own environment, please follow these steps:

  1. Use the advice provided on these web pages to identify the appropriate tools, and how to install them: Home Installation instructions.
  2. Complete the Lab 1 exercises in week one and bring any questions that arise to any of the week one labs.
  3. Use Ed to seek help from others in the class.
  4. Seek help from your tutor during your scheduled lab.
  5. Seek help from your lecturer via Ed or before and after lectures.
  6. Seek help from the Computer Science Student’s Association (CSSA), who explicitly set out to help their members with matters such as setting up home computers.

All of the software tools you need are provided as part of the standard environment in the School of Computing labs in CSIT Building 108 and Hanna Neumann Building 45 but are also freely available for Linux, Windows and MacOS X, so if you wish to work on your own computer, you can easily do so. Please read the notice above before following the instructions below.

If you are using Ubuntu, you can get exactly what you need from the CECS Teaching Labs Repository.

We will do our best to support anyone using these standard tools. You are most welcome to use alternatives (such as a different IDE, etc), but you should not expect any support when you run into trouble using non-standard tools. For that reason, we strongly recommend that you stick to the supported tools unless you are quite confident in your ability to resolve any problems that may arise with non-standard tools. Furthermore, the lab tests will be conducted in the lab environment, so you will need to be proficient with the standard tools for the lab tests, regardless of which tools you choose to use at home.

Please find the detailed instructions for installing tools on your native environment at the Home Installation page.

Using the School of Computing Virtual Desktop Environments

The School of Computing offers two options for virtualizing its standard environment on your own computer, (see VirtualBox, details below).

Overview

VirtualBox

The ANU School of Computing also supports VirtualBox as a virtual machine installation of the Linux environment. The instructions for installing VirtualBox are here.

Accessing School Computers Remotely

In addition to the above you can directly access the School computers. You are unlikely to need to do this in COMP1100.

Support and Help for the School Environment

Since GlobalProtect, VMWare Horizon, and VirtualBox are all ANU-supported software platforms, if you run into troubles you should use the Service Desk to log an issue.

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