Creating and Editing Files

To create files we use a text editor. Do not use a word processor such as LibreOffice.

Graphical Options

Graphical editors must be used from within a graphical environment. On Linux the standard graphical windowing system is called X11. Newer Linux versions provide some form of “desktop” environment similar to Windows or MacOS on top of X11. On Rivanna we provide the MATE Desktop Environment. It can be accessed from FastX on a frontend. It can also be started on a compute node from the Open OnDemand Desktop Interactive Application.

gedit/pluma

Modern Linux systems provide at least one graphical text editor. One option is gedit. On the MATE Desktop used on Rivanna, the equivalent is pluma, but the gedit command starts pluma.

Gedit/pluma is very similar to Notepad on Windows.

VS Code

This is accessed by a module.

$module load code-server

Then open a browser (Firefox is the default on MATE) and go to the URL http://127.0.0.1:8080.