Free software

We can classify the software into two big groups:

1. Proprietary software
2. Free software

Click in any of them to see a complete explanation.

Almost all the software (As Ubuntu or OpenOffice) we are using in this course is free software. So you can get all this programs for free and also if you want you have the freedom to modify them.
On the contrary, the famous Microsoft Windows operating system, or Microsoft Office are examples proprietary software. Those programs are really close and expensive.
Let see some other examples:


You can see an interesting documentary about how GNU Linux operating system was made.

Operating systems

An operating system is just a program that allow us control the computer. When we boot the computer this is the first program that we see.

In the wikipedia we can find a good explanation about what an operating system is and about the common characteristics of modern operating systems.

Here we can learn how an operating system works.

GNU Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX... are examples of operating systems.

GNU Linux is a free operating system. This means that usually you can get it for free and also that you have freedom to modify it and see how it works.

As any person with enough knowledge is free to modify the GNU Linux operating system we can find a lot of different versions of it. For the classes we will use a famous version of GNU Linux called Ubuntu.

A good place to begin to learn how to use Ubuntu is the Ubuntu Documentation Webpage.

How Internet works

In this presentation you can see how the network connections are established between the computers to be able to use some services that Internet provides.


In Howstuffworks.com you can see a complete explanation of How Internet works, if you want to see it, click here.

For a more technical explanation, you can see the article in the wikipedia by clicking here.

If you want to see some animations about Internet click here.

Here you can see a video explaining the way IP packets flow on the Internet:

Files

A file is a block of information. The information stored inside a computer is organized in files.
Files are identified by a "name.format" sructure. With the "format" we are able to identify which kind of file is this (text, video, sound, image...) and with the name we are able to identify a concrete file.
For example a possible homework file could be: englishhomework.txt where "englishhomework" is the name that identify the file and "txt" is a text format that allow us identify this file as a text.

A folder is an special kind of file that contain information about the location of other files. This is a transparent operation therefore we can say that a folder is a container for other files. Folders are used for clasify files. For example we can create a folder called "My writings" and put all my personal "something.txt" files inside.

If you want to lean the most common operations with files you can see this web page.

For more information about how to work with files in ubuntu see the ubuntu documentation webpage.

What is a computer window?

Let's see wikipedia definition of computer window




Most common tasks:

How to interact with the computer:

Introduction

As we saw in the last class we can think in the computer as a black box where information is going inside, this information is processed and sometimes also stored, and this processed information comes out.
We use the keyboard and the mouse to introduce information, therefore control the computer. All this information is processed and comes out by the screen.

The mouse

Theory:

We can find a great explanation about the mouse (computing device) in the wikipedia.

Practice:
As we may know the mouse is a device that allow us to move one small arrow all over the screen. Furthermore the mouse use to have one or more button. Moving the mouse and using the buttons we are able to control most of the functions of the computer.

The keyboard

In the wikipedia (again) we can find a good explanation of how the keyboard works.

Also we have some applications installed that explain how to use the keyboard:

Applications ---> Education --> Ktouch
or
Applications ---> Accessories --> Klavaro's Touch Typing Tutor
or
Applications ---> Games --> Tux Typing
or
Applications ---> Games --> Educational Suite GCompris

Computer Basics

Computer history:

To download a presentation about the Computer history, click on the next image:



How computer works:

If you want information about how computer works you can see it in the wikipedia.
The wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet.

If you click here you will have some presentations about how computer works.

In the web page "Howstuffworks.com" you can find information about how anything works. If you click here you will see how computer works.




Hardware:

In the wikipedia you can also find information about:

• CPU
• Moherboard
• Ports
• Computer memory
• Computer storage
• Random Access Memory
  

How to interact with the computer: keyboard, mouse, screen/touchscreen