Here is an anonymized transcript of the questions in the session on January 21st, 2021 with my answers

* From student : Will there also be classes with student assistants for help with the exercises?

*Updated* In the faglæarermøte today there was a discussion about having time slots reserved for 
on-campus student group work. It is currently unclear if the rooms we were assigned for this are
suitable under Corona safety considerations and at the moment we lack a sufficient number of student
assistants to do the supervision. 

This will be discussed and hopefully resolved with the department. However, please note that I do
not want to expose any of our student assistants to potential dangers of Corona infection, so 
we might run these sessions in a mode in which the stud.ass. is only available online, but groups
of students can gather on campus to work on exercises together.

* From student : Is Mads Nygård not involved in the course anymore? 

No, I have taken over the course this year since Mads has a large number of other duties already.

* From student : Is it possible to be 4 people in a group?

In exepctional cases yes. Please send me an email if this is required.

* From student : The ntnu website says that this course is 100% graded baseed on the exam.

This information has to be provided more than 6 months in advance. At that time, the Corona
regulations, the continued use of home exams in this spring semester (and also the outrage
in the press about large numbers of cheating students at one IDI exam...) were not known.
Thus, with the switch to a 50/50 weighting of the practical exercises and the home exam,
we try to follow IDI's recommendations. Please note that this still needs to be confirmed
by the department, but I don't expect any problems with this.

* From student : Where do we hand in the exercises?

On Blackboard, there's a link in the menu on the left hand side called "course work" resp.
"Arbeitskrav" pånorsk. Please configure the groups in which you are going to hand in the
exercises in Blackboard. If you still need to find group partners, please use the option
on piazza.

* From student : What is the difference between the two sessions on thursdays?

So far, there will be only one session (this one 12:15-13:00) on Thursdays. If there is 
demand, we will use the additional time slot for further discussion.

* From student : would you recommend installing linux/ubuntu, or is windows (with a ubuntu bash) sufficient?

If you are using Windows 10, you can install the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
This installs a complete Linux environment running under your Windows 10 installation,
I would recommend installing the default Ubuntu Linux distribution if you haven't used
Linux before. WSL behaves (almost) exactly like a real Linux system, so there's no
need for a separate Linux install.

Please note that there are two versions of WSL, depending on the release version of
your Windows 10 system. WSL1 is the older system which uses a sort of simulation of 
the Linux kernel which replaces Linux system calls by Windows kernel calls, whereas
WSL2 (only available with more recent Windows 10 release versions) is more of a 
traditional, but tightly integrated, virtual machine that runs a "real" Linux kernel.

Both versions allow you to continue using your favorite Web Browser/Editor/Mail Tool
etc. on Windows and to transfer files to and from the Linux subsystem as required.

If you are still running an older version of Windows, it's probably time to upgrade ;-).

* From student : Can you be on a group alone if you have a good reason to?

In case of exceptional reasons - yes. Of course, this will be difficult for us if 
all 280 students have exceptional cases (and, of course, working on the exercises
is more work if you have to do it alone). Please send me an email if you need this.

* From student : Will the curriculum be similar to that of previous years, and if so, will previous exams be relevant when reading for this years exam?

We will concentrate more on Unix/Linux system programming from the view of an 
application and also on the typical mechanisms used inside a Unix kernel (plus
some insight into how some things work in real life in Linux). However, the 
general structure doesn't change. The practical exercises will be significantly
differenct since we will use Linux/Unix and C instead of Java as in previous 
years.

* From student : On Piazza, the instructors' answer to a question states practical exercises is weighted one sixth of the final practical   mark each. Is this wrong? Is it only one fifth?

Copy-and-paste error (1/6th is for the compilers course), for TDT4186 it's 1/5 = 20%.

* From student : I see that the first practical exercise is a C exercise, but isn't this a course in Operating Systems, not C? Why then is 10% of the grade then evaluated on how well we know C? Will it be possible to do the exercises in Rust?

This first C exercise is intended to bring students "up to speed" who haven't 
programmed in C before, so the learning curve is a bit less steep (I hope). 
This is actually an easy way to collect some points I think, so I hope nobody
is really unhappy with this...

Rust would be great to use, but the learning curve for Rust is quite a bit 
steeper than for C (for example, the Borrow Checker takes some time to
understand and is sometimes difficult to make happy...). In addition, our
TAs are not that proficient in Rust, so it would be difficult to support 
you (and I also know C much better than Rust, though I intend to change
this). It would be a great idea for upcoming years, but I think Rust should
then be taught earlier on in another course already.

* From student : Should macOS 11 function as well as macOS 10?

Yes, I will test the exercises on macOS 10.14 and 11 (that's the machines
I have here) as well as Ubuntu 20.10 (which should also work with WSL - 
sorry, I don't have a Windows machine here...), so all common systems
should be covered.

* From student : Are all chapters of the books relevant for the course? Can you make a list of the ones that are relevant?

We will add a syllabus indicating which chapters of the book(s) are relevant
to the respective lecture. However, I don't stick too close to any of the books,
so sometimes there might be different terms used. If there's confusion, just ask.

* From student : Will each group be linked to a specific student assistant, or should we approach a random SA and stick to that person

I need to figure out if/how this works in Blackboard. If yes, we can configure
a fixed assignment. However, I'm afraid we won't be able to let you choose the
student assistant :-). Also, there might be certain weeks in which one of the 
stud.ass. is unavailable, so temporarily someone else might take over.

* From student : how do you recommend we read and practice for this course?

I would propose to concentrate on the lecture videos (and slides) first. If you
think you need more background information, dig into the book(s). I will also
provide some additional material for students who want to know more details.

* From student : And if i swap to Linux/ubu, will my local files/programs be lost?

If you install a Linux system on your PC, you can partition the disk into 
two parts, one for Windows (which is shrunk automatically by a modern Linux
install - of course, you need to have enough free space on this) and one 
for Linux. The installation also installs a boot loader which enables you
to choose between Windows and Linux when you start/reboot the computer.
You won't lose any files (though I strongly recommend doing a backup of 
the Windows system before you try this), but it's not that simple to transfer
files from the Linux to the Windows partition and back.

It's far easier to just use WSL nowadays (see above).

* From student : Are there any particular Linux distros you would recommend/not recommend?

For beginners, I would recommend Ubuntu, the most recent version is 20.10
(October 2020). Ubuntu gets updates every 6 months, so the next release 
will be 21.04, which is too late for us :-). There's lots of information
on using Ubuntu online.

If you prefer any other Linux distribution, you probably wouldn't ask ;-).

* From student : I definitely recommend Ubuntu subsystem over dual booting

*agreed*

* From student : I have MacBook, how do I go forward with this course ?

See above, we will test all exercises on macOS 10.14 and 11 (that's what
my computers here have installed). macOS is a Unix system, on the level
we are working on here, the differences to Linux are mostly negligible.
We'll give hints if there are any relevant differences between macOS 
and Linux you might run into.

* From student : will this video be recorded?

Yes, and anonymized -> online now.

* From student : I have MacBook from the future.

Great, please send me one, too ;-).

* From student : Do you have a cat in the background?

Nope, wish I had one... the sound you might hear is just the loud old
fan of my NAS system ;-).

* From student : Is it python or java for the practical excercises?

Neither nor, it's C on Linux, see above.

--- fin ---