Installing gfortran section - thoughts

[jklebes]

A learner going along the page and running every command they see in a hurry (yes, not ideal, but I would do that) will encounter conda install conda-forge::gfortran first, which may be unnecessary and can cause further difficulties if conda is not installed.

We make "command line access" a prerequisite but not sudo access (unlike some HPC courses). I think there are two likely scenarios here : either they are on some university-managed linux system, then they probably already have gfortran installed. Or they have their own laptop, then they probably have root access and an idea of how their package manager works.

Technically, everything is there, if one reads instructions carefully and follows links.

I feel like the layout disproportionately highlights the conda command. The actual important things to try first are hidden behind the link to fortran-lang.
I think this should be repeated in short in our GFortran box , for emphasis:

1. check whether they already have gfortran, which gfortran or gfortran -v.
2. Install gfortran via package manager if possible, apt install gfortran or other
3. then try conda option, build , or other compilers