An important aim of the Informatics computing infrastructure is that you should be able to easily and securely use your data, and make use of computing resources, from outside of the School's internal network. To do this, you need to have certain software packages installed on your home computer. Although there are pages on this site telling you how to install this software, they don't necessarily explain what each piece of software does, why you might need them, and how they interact. This page tries to fill that gap.