Windows and Ubuntu Desktops are available in the HIC-TRE. Available packages vary with each projects' requirements, though we are working on a standard set of packages that will be available to all researchers.
In general we’ll consider requests for most open-source packages as long as they have clear scriptable installation instructions. Commercial applications may be available depending on licensing, for example Matlab is available to University of Dundee researchers but not external researchers.
Some packages can be installed by a researcher after they’ve created a workspace. A partial CRAN mirror for R is available, and additional packages can be request via a SUPPORT ticket. Longer term we will add a conda-forge mirror to support installation of Python packages by researchers, but this is not yet available.
Examples of packages include:
VSCode
PyCHARM
JupyterLab/Notebook
R/RStudio
Python/Conda
Microsoft SQL Server
A minority of software cannot be installed in the HIC-TRE as are not designed to work in cloud based environments.
Researchers are strongly advised to discuss their requirements before starting a project.