• Your hardware must be directly supported by our Linux distribution, in particular without use of third party network or storage drivers.
  • We are always happy to advise on hardware purchase based on your requirements and budget.
• The primary hard drive will be devoted entirely to the operating system.
  • Local user data must be stored on separate hard drives. We value your data, and will not put it at risk by having it share space with the OS, where it may get overwritten by re-partitioning during reinstalls or updates.
  • “leftover” space on the primary system drive will be configured and available to users as “scratch” space.
• We do not share root passwords with non IT-staff. If you have special needs, talk to us, we can usually make things work for you using sudo.
• Home directories are generally stored on the department file server, although can discuss special arrangements for special needs.
• We cannot support dual-boot systems.

Data storage on individual workstations is discouraged, as the data are generally not protected against drive failure, and is not backed up.

We expect to be involved in the purchase process for any server hardware we are expected to support.