Your computer is the thing you are reading and typing on :) You should know a few things about it before we go much further.
Starting development work requires at least a passing familiarity with what is happening inside your machine, what software is installed, and where to look next for help!
Figure out your OS and version
sudo privilege is pretty helpful
Check to see that you have at least 1 Gb of disk space left.
Start up a terminal. You can find the Terminal application at Applications/Accessories/Terminal, or it may already be on your menu bar. In your terminal:
$ uname -a
Know your OS and version number? Good!
A command line interface (CLI) is way of interacting with a computer by typing commands. DOS is an example of a command line interface.
Many development tools don’t have graphic user interfaces–they only have command line interfaces.
Start up a terminal. You can find the Terminal application at Applications/Accessories/Terminal, or it may already be on your menu bar. In your terminal:
$ bash --version
gedit is a cross-platform, syntax-highlighting text editor.
To write your code in! Word is a fine program, but it is not a text editor.
Gedit is probably installed on your machine already.
Python is a general purpose, dynamically-typed, strongly-typed, interpreted computer programming language.
Well, this is a Python progammming workshop!
Linux comes with Python installed!
Start up a terminal. You can find the Terminal application at Applications/Accessories/Terminal, or it may already be on your menu bar.
Test your Python install at the command prompt. Type python and hit enter. You should see something like:
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jan 24 2010, 17:44:40)
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
To exit the Python prompt, type exit() and press Enter. This will take you back to the Terminal command prompt.