Theoretical Physics Linux Desktop System

Linux Desktops

Theoretical Physics provides a unified, multi-user desktop system for its members to perform day-to-day computing tasks and smaller numerical tasks. The system is based around Dell Optiplex 9020s with 8GB or 24GB of RAM, and Lenovo M9xx desktop clients with 16GB or 24GB of RAM.

The desktop clients share authentication information and each mount a common filesystem, meaning that users can log into any or all Linux Desktops at both the console and via SSH or x2go (on request). Each system runs a common, continuously developed software set that provides modern and stable software on the desktop, and ensures that code that runs on one machine can be easily run on all the other machines in the system.

Dell PowerEdge interactive clients

The Linux desktop system also has several server-class clients configured in the same way as other desktops, with the addition of x2go remote desktop software. These provide a stop-gap between the performance of the desktop Linux systems and the cluster computers. These machines have either 20-core Intel Xeon CPUS run at ~3GHz and 64GB or 128GB RAM. They run the same software set as the Linux desktops, so code compiled on the desktop system can easily be made to run on the PowerEdge hardware.

Dell PowerEdge machines

tplxint1 20.04
tplxint2 20.04
tplxint3 20.04
tplxint4 20.04
tplxint5 20.04

Quick links

• An account on the Linux desktop system will be set up when you have a departmental database record with the correct status, please contact the departmental administrator for details.
• If you have arrived and do not have a desktop on your desk, please contact Theory support immediately.