Desktop Systems

All users within the Centre are provided with an IBM PC which runs Linux or Windows XP as appropriate.

The PCs installed are either Lenovo M58s or M52s. The Lenovo M58 PCs have Intel 3.0 GHz Dual Core CPUs with either 4 or 8 GB of memory, and Nvidia 7300 or 8400 graphics cards. The Lenovo M52 PCs have Intel 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPUs with 2 GB of memory and built-in Intel Xtreme Graphics.

The Linux PCs are currently running the OpenSUSE 10.3 distribution. They provide most facilities that users require - such as web browsing, email access, file editing and terminal access to other systems. In addition, Metview and other visualization facilities are available.

For those with Linux PCs, access to some Windows software applications is also required, in particular Microsoft Office and Macromedia Dreamweaver. This is achieved using VMware Player from VMware Corporation (www.vmware.com), which allows a second guest operating system to be installed and used under Linux. In the Centre's case, the guest system used is Microsoft Windows XP. Access to the Unix HOME filesystems from Windows is provided by using Samba running on the HANFS system.