Linux

Note on Ubuntu

If you have Ubuntu:

• Carefully read the text below!
• DO NOT INSTALL rust THROUGH apt. Install using official installation instructions and use rustup
• before installation, make sure you have build-essential, libfontconfig and libfontconfig1-dev installed
• Be prepared for annoying problems

We recommend you to use Linux for this course. Mac OS X, should work fine but Windows has proved troublesome. We strongly discourage using Windows, it is possible for this course but not future courses. Therefore, we recommend you start learning and using Linux from the start.

Since everything has been tested on Linux, this is what we can best give support on. On other platforms, we cannot guarantee it.

If you're new to Linux, we highly recommend Fedora Linux to get started. If you would like to actually learn about Linux and become more proficient with it, we do recommend giving Arch Linux a try.

You might find that many online resources will recommend Ubuntu to get started, but especially for Rust development this may prove to be a pain. If you install Rust through the official installer, it can work just fine on Ubuntu. However, if you installed rust through apt it will not work.

Fedora also provides a gentle introduction to Linux, but will likely provide a better experience. For this course and for pretty much all other situations as well.

See Toolchain how to get all required packages.