Welcome to the home page of the First steps with UNIX SIB course.
Please make sure to read this and setup your environment before the start of the course.
The only technical requirement for the course is having a laptop with a
reasonably recent version of either a bash shell (version >= 4.0), or a
zsh shell (the default shell on Mac OS since 2019).
- Linux and Mac OS: the above requirements should in principle already be met, and there should be no need to install anything.
- Windows: please see the
setting-up your environment instructions for
instructions on how to install a
bashshell on your machine.
With the constant evolution of technologies, life scientists such as laboratory biologists are faced with an increasing need for bioinformatics skills to deal with high-throughput data storage, retrieval and analysis.
Although several resources developed for such tasks have a graphical user interface, many operations can be more efficiently handled with command-line programs and utilities.
This course is an introduction to using computers in command line via a terminal, and more specifically the Bash shell as well as some of the core UNIX commands.
This course is addressed to beginners wanting to become familiar with the UNIX environment and master the most common commands, which could be useful to run software dedicated to high-throughput data management.
At the end of the course you should:
- Be able to execute most basic UNIX commands
- Be able to build complex and combined commands using various parameters
- Be sufficiently skilled for further courses requiring basics of UNIX, like HPC or NGS courses
An optional exam can be taken at the end of the course to get a recommendation for 0.25 ECTS credits.
This is a course for beginners, and no background in UNIX or any programming language is required.
A laptop with a command line terminal and a relatively recent version of Bash (>= 4.0).