1. In the terminal type type the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential emacs
The aptitude package manager will install the g++ compiler [among a few other apps] and the emacs text editor along with any dependencies needed. Enter your password if/when prompted, and choose "Y" when prompted to install.
If you receive an error similar to the one below, you probably do not have the proper repositories enabled.
=====================================================================
E: Package build-essential has no installation candidate
=====================================================================
1. To enable them, in the console, issue the following command:
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Append the following lines to this file:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted
3. Exit out of nano saving the changes made.
4. Update the your repos:
$ sudo apt-get update
5. Install the packages:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential emacs
Note: The dollar sign ($) is used to represent the command prompt. When
entering the commands, do not include it.
1) Download and burn a copy of ubuntu from ubuntu.com; use the x86 distribution for most cases; older non-intel macs require the PPC distribution
2) Use a partition utility such as PartitionMagic to resize your Windows partition and create a new one for Linux
3) Boot up from the Ubuntu install disc; installation is fairly straightforward. When asked which partition to install to, select the partition you created before, formatting to ext2/3 or reiserfs, and use "/" for the mount point. If you have Windows installed, a bootloader will automatically be configured.
4) After setting up necessary drivers (more info at ubuntuguide.org), type:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
at the terminal to install all necessary tools for programming and
compiling.
5) Ubuntu comes with gedit, which supports color coding for programming. You can also use vi or pico from the terminal. Emacs can be installed with:
sudo apt-get install emacs
at the terminal. Eclipse is also available; replace "emacs" with "eclipse" in the above command.
This will ensure that the gcc compiler is installed; it's a newer version than that on the CSE servers, but I've never encountered any compatibility issues between the two. The commands for compiling source files are the same.