Operating Systems

Commonly-used Operation Systems

There are three most commonly used operation systems for personal computers:

  • Microsoft Windows

  • Apple macOS

  • Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat, Debian, …)

Most seismologists choose macOS or Linux as their primary operation system for daily researches, because both macOS and Linux provide easy access to toolchains needed in programming, and most existing programs/codes/packages for seismological researches were written on Linux and only work on Linux and macOS. As a beginner, you should use macOS or Linux. For Windows 10 users, you can install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on your Windows 10, just like installing any other Windows softwares. It may behave very similar to the pure Linux OS, but I have never tried it.

macOS

For people who have a MacBook, MacBook Pro or iMac, you need to install the “Command Line Tools for Xcode” and Homebrew, then you’re almost all set. Please refer to setting macOS

Windows Subsystem for Linux

We can use Linux subsystem in Windows10, i.e., Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Firstly, we have to update the windows system. Please check the following official document for the system version requirement. If the system version is a too low, please refer to Update Assistant.

WSL now has two versions, WSL1 and WLS2. Please check their difference (Microsoft DOC & USTC LUG). You can use WSL2. Please refer to the Microsoft DOC and Chinese DOC to install WSL.

When WSL is installed, type wsl in Windows Terminal to start WSL. You can get access to filesystems of Windows and WSL from each other. When you are using WSL, you can get access to files in Windows. For example, Disk C is at /mnt/c. When you are at Windows, you can get access to files in WSL by typing explorer.exe . in the terminal. The last dot means the current path.

You can use WSL as you are using a Linux system. If you’d like to plot figures, you have to set Xserver referring to the manual.