We currently use version 7.3 of the Red Hat distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. Our kernel is Linux, version 2.4.18-5.

About a thousand packages are included in the Red Hat distribution, classified in the following ``package groups'':

• Printer support
• Classic X Window system
• X Window system
• GNOME
• KDE
• Sound and multimedia support
• Network support
• Dialup support
• Messaging and Web tools
• Graphics and image manipulation
• Network managed workstation
• Authoring and publishing
• Emacs
• Utilities
• Legacy application support
• Software development
• Kernel development
• Windows compatibility/interoperability
• Games and entertainment

and we support another 150 or so from other sources. Here are some of the programs that you're most likely to encounter and use:

• The bash shell (version 2.05a), which reads in and interprets the user's commands and displays the results; the shell responds to several commands that are built in rather than existing as separate programs, among them

  • pwd, which displays the current working directory
  • cd, which changes the current working directory
  • pushd, which changes the current working directory and stores the former working directory
  • popd, which recovers the previously stored working directory and makes it current

• The GNU file utilities (version 4.1), among them

  • ls, which lists the contents of a directory
  • cp, which copies files and directories
  • mv, which renames files and directories
  • rm, which removes files and directories
  • ln, which creates links between files (sometimes known as ``shortcuts'')
  • mkdir, which creates directories
  • rmdir, which removes empty directories
  • chown, which changes the ownership of files or directories
  • chgrp, which changes the group ownership of files or directories
  • chmod, which changes the access permissions of files or directories
  • touch, which changes the timestamps of files or directories
  • du, which reports the amount of disk space occupied by a directory

• The GNU text utilities (version 2.0.21), among them

  • cat, which concatenates and displays files
  • head, which displays the first few lines of a file
  • tail, which displays the last few lines of a file
  • wc, which counts the number of bytes, whitespace-separated words, and newlines in files
  • sort, which sorts the lines of text files
  • comm, which performs a line-by-line comparison of two text files
  • cut, which prints selected parts of lines
  • tr, which performs a character-by-character translation on the characters it receives as input

• The GNU utilities for comparing and merging files (version 2.7.2), among them

  • cmp, which performs a byte-by-byte comparison on two files
  • diff, which compares the contents of two text files
  • diff3, which compares the contents of three text files

• The GNU utilities for finding files (version 4.1.7), and specifically find, which searches through a directory structure looking for files that meet specified conditions

• grep (version 2.5.1), which finds every occurrence of a string or pattern in one or more text files

• The less pager (version 358), which displays files a windowful at a time

• The LPRng printing utilities (version 3.8.9), including

  • lpr, which sends files to a printer
  • lpq, which checks the status of print queues
  • lprm, which cancels a request for the printing of a file

• sed (version 3.02), which performs specified editing operations on text files

• yppasswd, version 2.6, which changes your password

The graphical user interface

The graphical user interface for most MathLAN users is GNOME (version 1.4). It is based on the GIMP Toolkit (GTK+), which in turn is built on top of the XFree86 implementation of the X Window System, and uses the Sawfish window manager.

The GNOME project also supplies a variety of application programs that also use the GIMP toolkit. Here are some of the commonly used applications:

• gnome-terminal, which emulates a terminal (and so enables a user to interact with a shell)

• Nautilus (version 1.0.6), a full-featured file graphical file manager and viewer

• The GNOME Control Center, which changes the appearance and behavior of various elements of the graphical user interface (independently for each user)

• Gnumeric (version 1.0.5), a spreadsheet

• gcalc, which simulates a pocket calculator

Mathematical software

MathLAN supports several large systems of mathematical software:

• The MATLAB numeric computation system (The MathWorks, Inc.), version 6.1

• The Maple interactive computer-algebra system (Waterloo Maple), version 8

• The Mathematica environment for technical computing (Wolfram Research), version 4.2

• The Magma system for algebra, number theory, and geometry (School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney), version 2.9-9

• The Octave numerical-computation language, version 2.1.35

• The Macaulay 2 system for algebraic geometry and commutative algebra (Dan Grayson and Michael Stillman), version 0.8

• The PARI-GP number-theory calculator, version 2.0.20

• The lp_solve constraint solver for linear programming (Michel Berkelaar), version 3.2

Programming languages

MathLAN directly supports the development of software in the following programming languages:

• C and C++, using the GNU Project's gcc compiler (also called g++), version 2.96

• Common Lisp, using CLISP, version 2.28, or CMU Common Lisp, version 18d

• FORTRAN 77, using the GNU Project's g77 compiler, version 0.5.26

• Haskell, using the Hugs 98 system, December 2001 version

• Icon, using version 9.4.1 of the University of Arizona compiler

• Java, using version 1.4.0 of the Sun's Java 2 Software Development Kit or version 1.3.1 of the IBM Developer Kit for Linux, Java 2 Technology Edition

• Lisp, using the XLISP-PLUS interpreter (Tom Almy), version 3.04

• ML, using the Standard ML of New Jersey compiler, version 110.0.7

• Pascal, using the GNU Pascal compiler, version 2.1

• Perl, version 5.6.1

• Prolog, using the GNU Prolog compiler, version 1.2.1

• Python, using the byte-compiler from python.org, version 1.5.2

• Scheme, using the DrScheme graphical development environment (Programming Languages Team, Rice University), version 201; the Chez Scheme compiler (Cadence Research Systems), version 6.1; the SCM implementation (Aubrey Jaffer), version 5d3; the Elk implementation (Oliver Laumann), version 3.0; the Scheme 48 implementation (Richard Kelsey and Jonathan Rees), version 0.57; or the GNU Project's Guile implementation, version 1.3.4

MathLAN also provides a number of object-code and source-code libraries for programmers.

Document preparation

Most documents and programs created on MathLAN are generated and revised with the XEmacs text editor, version 21.4.6. We also support the GNOME editor, gedit, version 0.9.7; the vi (actually vim) editor, version 6.1; the AbiWord word processor, version 0.99.5; and the OpenOffice.org suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, graphics, etc.), version 1.0.

Many of our documents, particularly those with mathematical content, are formatted and typeset by TeX (Donald E. Knuth), version 3.14159. MathLAN supports an extensive collection of TeX-related software, including the METAFONT font-construction program (Knuth), version 2.7182; the LaTeX formatting macros (Leslie Lamport), version 2epsilon; the dvips program (Tom Rokicki), version 5.86, for converting device-independent TeX output into PostScript document descriptions; the xdvi program (Paul Vojta), version 22.05d-k, for previewing documents typeset by TeX; and the latex2html program (Nikos Drakos), version 2002 (1.62), for converting LaTeX documents to HTML

For the development of Web documents, MathLAN supports the Amaya editor/browser, version 6.2.

The a2ps program (Akim Demaille), version 4.13b, translates source files in many different formats into PostScript document descriptions, so that they can be printed. It provides many formatting options.

PostScript document descriptions can be processed and displayed on MathLAN with the Ghostscript and Ghostview software (Aladdin Enterprises). We are currently running version 6.52 of Ghostscript and version 3.5.8 of Ghostview.

Our interactive spelling checker is International Ispell (Geoff Kuenning), version 3.1.20.

We use Antiword, version 0.32, to obtain plain text versions of Microsoft Word files.

For version control, MathLAN provides the GNU Project's Revision Control System, version 5.7, and the Concurrent Versions System, version 1.11.1p1.

For file compression, we recommend and support the GNU Project's gzip software, version 1.3.3.

Files compressed in the .zip format widely used on MS-DOS computers can be recovered with the UnZip utilities (Info-Zip), version 5.41.

For encryption, we recommend and support GNU Project's GNU Privacy Guard, version 1.0.6.

The Internet

Our primary browser for HTML documents is Mozilla, version 0.9.9, although we also support Netscape Communicator (Netscape Communications Corporation), version 4.79; Opera, version 6.03; and Lynx, version 2.8.4. MathLAN also provides the Adobe Acrobat Reader (Adobe Systems Incorporated), version 5.0.5, and the xpdf viewer (Derek B. Noonburg), version 1.00.

Our Usenet supplier is Supernews; point your newsreader at news.grinnell.edu. We read Usenet through the Gnus subsystem in XEmacs, version 1.58.

Hypertext documents published on MathLAN are distributed from www.math.grinnell.edu by means of the Apache hypertext server, version 1.3.19. Server support is provided for documents using the Common Gateway Interface, the Secure Socket Layer, the PHP hypertext preprocessor, and Perl.

For remote login, command execution, and file transfer, we use the OpenBSD project's implementation of the SSH (``secure shell'') protocol, OpenSSH, version 3.1p1.

Alternatively, MathLAN supports a Kerberos authentication server (kerberos.math.grinnell.edu) and client software on each workstation (version 5, release 1.2.4). Like OpenSSH, Kerberos provides encrypted remote login and remote command execution services.

Graphics

Our main tool for developing and processing images is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), version 1.2.3.

MathLAN also supports three simpler tools for developing diagrams and abstract graphics: XPaint (David Koblas and Torsten Martinsen), version 2.6.2; XCircuit (R. Timothy Edwards)), version 2.5.4; and Xfig (Brian V. Smith), version 3.2.3c. Xfig comes with a conversion program, fig2dev, which converts Xfig's output files to various other formats.

Graphic images in many formats can be displayed, edited, and converted from one format to another with the ImageMagick package, version 5.4.3. MathLAN also supports the special-purpose gif2png utility (Eric S. Raymond), version 2.4.5, which converts image files from the proprietary GIF format to the free PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format.

Shells

In addition to bash, two other shells (command interpreters) are supported:

• The ash shell, ash (Kenneth Almquist), version 0.3.7. This is a lightweight POSIX-compliant version of the Bourne shell.

• The C shell, tcsh, version 6.10, an implementation of the C shell..

created June 14, 1995
last revised May 26, 2003

John David Stone (stone@cs.grinnell.edu)