Integrated Development Environments: kdevelop is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) similar to IDE's found under Windows. Describing kdevelop is beyond the scope of this document.  You can find more information at http://www.kdevelop.org Editorsi: There are many editors available for Linux. If you're actually in the lab, I urge you to use one of the graphical editors available.  There are two in the "K" desktop environment. You can find them under the "K" Menu at the bottom-left of the screen. 1) kedit is a simple graphical editor that is similar in function to Windows "Notepad". 2) kwrite is a more powerful graphical editor that is similar in function to Windows "Write". However, it can colorize your source code to make editing easier. For example, comments in red, strings in blue, etc. If you're telnet-ing in, there are three text-based editors to choose from: 1) pico is a simple editor that many beginning Linux users choose. It's quite simple to use and intuitive to understand. 2) vi is the workhorse of Unix. It is a "home" key editor, meaning that your hands never leave the keyboard "home" position. It does not support a mouse, but the cursor keys may work. A quick reference for the most common commands can be found by clicking here. 3) emacs is a very powerful editor. It is completely programmable and can do lots of cool stuff for you. Click here for a quick reference for emacs. Compiling: Now that you've got your source code in a file, you are ready to compile. The C++ compiler under Linux is called g++. To use it, type the following: g++ -Wall -o exec_name source.cpp ... Where exec_name is replaced with the name of the executable file that will be created and source.cpp is replaced with the name of your source code. Note, you can list as many .cpp files as you like. The -Wall option says to turn on all warnings. Remove the option if it gets annoying. Note: Do not name your program test. test is a program in /bin that is used in Bourne shell programming. Instead, name your executable mytest or something more meaningful. Separate Compilation: If you separate your source code into many small files, you should compile each of them separately and link them together to form the executable. This approach enables you to compile only those files that you've changed, rather than compiling every line of code every time. You can do this by hand with the following commands. g++ -Wall -c source1.cpp g++ -Wall -c source2.cpp ... The -c option means "compile only". An executable will not be created. Rather, a binary object (.o) file is created. Once you compile all your files, you can link them together into an executable with either of these commands: g++ -o exec_name source1.o source2.o OR g++ -o exec_name *.o The last line works if you want to combine all the .o files in the current directory. This process can be automated with the make utility. A very simple Makefile can be found by clicking here.  Once you create and edit this file, all you have to do is type "make" at the command line. Executing: Just type the name of your executable at the command-line. You may have to preface the executable with "./" if "." isn't in your path. For example... $ mytest    if this doesn't work... bash: mytest: command not found $ ./mytest then try this Debugging: The debugger under Linux is called "gdb" (for Gnu DeBugger). Type gdb exec_name to start it. See the man page for more information or click here for a gdb quick reference. Note: You have to compile with the -g option to use the debugger.