The Desktop Environment

Once your Desktop session connects you get a Linux desktop running on a compute node, displayed inside your browser tab. It looks sparse on purpose — almost everything you do starts from a terminal window.

A Linux desktop running inside a browser tab. A thin bar runs across the top with an Applications menu on the left, a list of open windows next to it, a workspace switcher on the right, and the clock and user name at the far right. Icons for Trash, File System, Home and a disk volume run down the left edge. A terminal window sits in the middle of the screen, and a row of application shortcuts sits at the bottom center.

The rest of this page walks through it one piece at a time.

Applications

The desktop with the Applications menu, at the far left of the top bar, highlighted.

The menu of applications that ship with Linux — the file manager, a text editor, a spreadsheet, a web browser and so on.

The scientific software is not in this menu. FreeSurfer, FSL, MATLAB, SPM and everything else RCS installs is reached through the module system instead, from a terminal.

Open Windows

The desktop with the window list, the stretch of the top bar to the right of the Applications menu, highlighted.

One button per application you currently have open. In the screenshot the only one running is the terminal. Click a button to raise that window, or click it again to minimize it.

Workspaces

The desktop with the workspace switcher, a row of small boxes near the right end of the top bar, highlighted.

Workspaces are separate copies of your desktop. You can keep different windows open in each and switch between them — a viewer in one, a terminal and your editor in another — rather than stacking everything on one screen.

Click a box to switch to that workspace.

Trash

The desktop with the Trash icon, at the top of the column of icons down the left edge, highlighted.

Where files deleted through the graphical file manager go.

This only catches graphical deletes. Files removed with rm in a terminal do not go here — they are gone immediately. See The Linux Command Line.

File System

The desktop with the File System icon, second in the column of icons down the left edge, highlighted.

Opens the file manager at the root of the filesystem, /. This is the way in to /project and /projectnb — see The Linux File System.

Home

The desktop with the Home icon, third in the column of icons down the left edge, highlighted.

Opens the file manager at your home directory, the same place a new terminal starts in.

The Dock

The desktop with the row of application shortcuts at the bottom center of the screen highlighted.

Shortcuts to the applications you reach for most, including the terminal, the file manager and a web browser.

Opening a Terminal

The terminal is where the rest of this guide happens. Click its icon in the dock, or find it under Applications.

A Desktop session also opens one for you at startup — that is what the Initial command to run field on the request form does, with its default of xfce4-terminal.

What Is Loaded

Unless you listed modules on the session request form, nothing scientific is loaded yet:

[scc4]$ module list
No modules loaded

Load what you need with the module system.

Copy and Paste

The clipboard is not universal. The desktop inside the browser tab keeps its own clipboard, so copying and pasting between it and your local computer behaves oddly.

RCS documents the ways around this: Copy and paste in SCC OnDemand.