Searching for software installed on our Linux systems

Unix Commands

which
If you know the exact name of the command you want to run, the which command should tell you its location: which emacs
man
You can read a manual page on some commands with the man command: man emacs
man -k
If you don't know the exact name of the command, you can try man -k. This example displays the name line of all man entries for the word editor: man -k editor.
locate
You can find the location of a file on your computer with the locate command: locate gl.h

Debian

Debian tries to put common application names in the menus of some windowing systems, such as kde or gnome. Look through the menus of your window manager for Debian or programs.

You can list all the packages currently installed on a Debian machine using dpkg -l. To see all the files contained in a package, run dpkg -L PACKAGE

/opt

We install software that is not part of the Debian archive, or more recent versions than is in the archives, in /opt on each machine. Run ls /opt to see these packages. In general, executables from Debian packages can be found in /usr/bin, whereas the executables from the /opt packages are more likely to be in /usr/local/bin

Requesting new software

Debian packages

We are happy to install new software on our systems. Just email techstaff with your installation request. The easiest and quickest to install is software prepackaged for Debian, ie files with a .deb extension. You can search the Debian software archives or view a full list of software packages in the Debian archive.

non-Debian software

If a .deb does not exist for the software you want to install, we can often install it, though it may take more time.

Featured Software

There are over 2500 separate Debian packages installed on the CS Linux machines. About 1000 of those are libraries, collections of software to support the use or development of software. Many of the others are small utilities that you might not notice. Below is a list of installed applications that you may want to use directly.

  • Abiword 2.4.6
  • Acrobat Reader 9.1.2
  • Alpine 1.10
  • Audacity 1.3.5
  • Compiz 0.7.6
  • Condor 7.4.0
  • Eclipse 3.2.2
  • Firefox 3.0.6 and 3.6
  • Java 1.6.0
  • Mathematica 7.0.1
  • Matlab 7.9.0
  • NX 3.3.0
  • OpenOffice.org 2.4
  • Poco 1.3.6
  • Skype 2.0.0
  • SML/NJ 110.71
  • TeX Live