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Linux as a platform

Linux generally works well as a platform for this course, as all the tools are supported natively, and all the libraries are quite easy to install.

You don't have to be running Linux natively in order to use it for this course - it works quite well in a virtual machine, and you get almost full performance from multiple cores. Support for GPUs from virtual machines is still poor/non-existent, but it is possible to install a software OpenCL for development purposes, then do the actual evaluation on a remote linux instance.

In terms of which Linux to choose, arguably the two main alternatives are Ubuntu or Debian. Ubuntu is probably the better choice if you want a full install with a GUI, while Debian is a bit more stable. For our purposes Ubuntu is a good choice.

Running in AWS

In the next coursework we will be using Amazon AWS, and this is the intended assessment environment, so you may wish to look ahead to the notes in the next coursework and purely use AWS. However, be aware that time in AWS costs money, so you should use a cheap instance for development (e.g. something that only costs 10p an hour). Generally speaking it is better to use a local machine for development, and only move to the target environment for testing and performance runs.

Using a virtual machine

I would suggest setting up a virtual machine rather than a full install of Linux, at least to start with. Later on if you want to access your GPU from within Linux it will need to be native, but the idea is that later on we well use GPUs in AWS, so the performance of your GPU is less interesting. Dual booting can be useful, but you might find it gets in the way a bit at first - try not to get blocked on creating a perfect install of Linux before doing the first coursework.

You'll need some kind of virtualisation software in order to run the VM. There are a few options:

  • VirtualBox: works well on both OS X and Windows

  • VMWare: I only have experience of this under Windows, though don't really use it much.

  • QEMU: This is more low-level. I wouldn't suggest using this (though it is a great piece of software).

Once you've selected or installed the virtualisation software, you'll need to install the guest OS. This is very similar to installing an OS on a real machine:

1 - Download a CD ISO Image.

2 - Create a new virtual machine in your virtualisation software.

3 - Boot the virtual machine with the ISO attached to the DVD drive.

4 - Follow the instructions in the Ubuntu installer.

Once the setup has finished, you should have a disposable Linux instance.

The exact installation steps require some common sense, or possibly a little research. There are many tutorials on installing Ubuntu in VirtualBox available with a little googling.

If anyone gets stuck, feel free to post an issue. I'm not too sure what people will find tricky about the process, so can't really anticipate the questions.

Installing libraries

Given a linux instance, you'll want to install a few tools. If you are in Ubuntu or Debian, the easiest way to get them is on the command line using apt. To get to a command line, look for an application called terminal in the GUI.

You'll probably want to install a few tools, such as g++ and git. You can do this with the following command (you may need to type in your super-user password):

sudo apt-get install g++ git

Breaking this down:

  • sudo : Run the command as the super-user (equivalent to administrator in windows). Installing packages requires system-wide permissions, so this is necessary here. Beware of getting too sudo happy, as you should only use if for situations where you need to be super-user.

  • apt-get : This is one of the components of the apt package, responsible for fetching and installing packages.

  • install : The apt-get component has a few functions, and we are selecting the install function.

  • g++ git : These are the two packages we want to install.

If you don't know which package you want, then you can search the database. For example, we can look for the package containing tbb:

apt-cache search tbb

In this case we don't need to be super-user, as we are not modifying the system, so sudo is not needed. You should see a list of possible packages. For example, I get:

$ apt-cache search tbb
libthrust-dev - Thrust - Parallel Algorithms Library
libtbb-dev - parallelism library for C++ - development files
libtbb-doc - parallelism library for C++ - documentation
libtbb2 - parallelism library for C++ - runtime files
libtbb2-dbg - parallelism library for C++ - debugging symbols
tbb-examples - parallelism library for C++ - example files

We want to develop with tbb, so the package needed is libtbb-dev:

sudo apt install libtbb-dev

Another thing you might want to do is to find the package that provides a file. For example, we might want to know who provides parallel_for.h. This can be done at the command line, but it is easier to look on the internet at the Ubuntu package search. If you search the contents of packages for parallel_for.h, it should tell you that it is in libtbb-dev.

Anything else that is missing you can install in the same way (e.g. make).

Please file an issue if you need more guidance.