There are many ways of previewing .gif files on Athena, and most of them are unsupported. Below you'll find some of them. First of all, type: add graphics To preview your file, type any of the following commands. They are all different programs, so you might want to try out all of them, until you find your favorite one. xloadimage file.gif xview file.gif xim & xv file.gif & You can get information for xv or xloadimage by typing: man xv or man xloadimage Although there are no official repositories for .gif files on athena, some are accessible in the directories: /mit/pictures/display and /mit/graphics/images/cmu-gif Note that in both cases you will need to attach the locker before accessing the files. For example, type: attach pictures or attach graphics You might also run the "setup-images" script in the /mit/graphics/images directory, and then look for GIF pictures in the "wu" directory, by typing: attach graphics cd /mit/graphics/images setup-images (Note: "setup-images", "setup_images", and "setupimages" are all identical.)