Setting up your computer for Physics 6810 "Computational Physics"

• Students have had success with an alternative to using Cygwin on Windows 10. He notes: "In the latest version of Windows 10, they have included a new package known as the 'Windows Linux Subsystem', which is essentially a Ubuntu VM that is automatically configured by Windows and mounts all of the Windows disks natively. Using it, I was able to do all of the PS#1 work by simply installing the required Ubuntu packages." Instructions from Microsoft to install WLS are available here. After installation, Logan says: "you are able to open the command prompt, type ‘bash’ and set your root password. Beyond that, you can set everything up the same as you would from an ubuntu terminal (your home folder in bash is automatically symlinked to your Windows user directory, so as long as you are storing your files under your user account there is no additional changes required. `sudo apt install` was able to link the linux build tools as well as gsl/gnuplot."
• A first pass at instructions for installing Cygwin on Windows 10 (including the extra packages) is here.

Macs

• To use the GSL library on a Mac, I recommend installing Homebrew first. Instructions to do both are given here. (It is not necessary, but you might want to explore the Homebrew webpage.) If you don't have the Xcode command line tools installed, you will be prompted to do so in the Homebrew installation process (you can just select "Install" rather than "Get Xcode"). You should also install XQuartz, which is available in dmg form and then install gnuplot using the command (after installing Homebrew!): brew install gnuplot --with-x11

Linux

• Note for Ubuntu users trying to connect to osuwireless: under Network Connections, add connections gives a list of wifi connections including osuwireless, which you can edit individually. The key is that under authentication you need to choose PEAP, which is (at least sometimes) not the default.