1.3. Option #3 – Ubuntu

If you are using the Virtual Computer, you can skip this step.

Using the instructions below, CODAS installation and CODAS processing has been thoroughly tested with 20.04. It may work with newer versions.

Although you can install regular ubuntu desktop we recommend Xubuntu, because it has a simpler desktop environment, which we find easier to use. We use it for all of our Linux installations including our UHDAS machines at sea and our Virtual Computer.

(1) Download and install an Ubuntu version.

Download and install Xubuntu

(2) Boot the new system, log in and connect to the network.

  • install the “Synaptic Package Manager”. Type

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Using sudo allows a regular user to run one command with administrative privileges (as “root”). You must type your own password to get a “sudo” command to run.

Synaptic is a graphical tool to manage software packages on the computer. The example below uses a command-line interface but if something does not work (eg. you want to add a package to improve your virtual machine) you can use Synaptic to try to identify the new name.

(3) Install various additional external packages

The Xubuntu 20.04 installation already has these

  • gcc (C-compiler)

  • python 3.8

Note

We use only Python 3, and our code is no longer compatible with Python 2.

Install additional required packages by typing:

sudo apt-get install ipython3
sudo apt-get install python3-dev
sudo apt-get install mercurial
sudo apt-get install python3-matplotlib
sudo apt-get install python3-mpltoolkits.basemap
sudo apt-get install python3-netcdf4
sudo apt-get install python3-qtpy
sudo apt-get install python3-qtconsole

To get ready for the next step, edit your user shell startup file (typically .bashrc) to prepend /usr/local/bin to your PATH environment variable, if it isn’t already there. As a quick way to check your current PATH, use:

printenv PATH

Now proceed to the CODAS-specific parts of the installation.