Remote Desktop
==============

The Linux environment is most readily accessible through a remote desktop on one of the departmental multi-user Linux servers. These systems allow users to create a desktop session and use all the software available in the Linux environment. 

Applications executed on a remote desktop run on the server and not on the local physical machine being operated by the user. If the connection to the server is terminated, the desktop session will continue running (along with any user applications). The connection to the server can be re-established, potentially from another location, to continue working. 

There are currently three remote desktop servers:

 - spitfire.ae.ic.ac.uk
 - hurricane.ae.ic.ac.uk
 - typhoon.ae.ic.ac.uk

These servers are accessible from any computer on campus, or over WiFi. They are accessible from outside of Imperial College by using Unified Access or OpenVPN. They are significantly more powerful than normal desktop computers, but are also multi-user systems, meaning that they are often being used by many users concurrently. As such, compute-intensive tasks should not be run directly on these machines (these should be run on the :doc:`Linux compute cluster <cluster>`). The following limits are in-place to prevent any one individual user unfairly causing excess load on these systems:

 - Maximum CPU allocation: 8 cores
 - Maximum memory usage: 32 GB

These limits apply to each user on each system.

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :glob:

   remote-desktop-access
   remote-desktop-session