A window manager controls the placement and appearance of windows on your screen.

When using the ⇒ DICE remote desktop you use a window manager called MATE. This can't be changed. But when you use a DICE computer directly - actually sitting in front of one - you have a choice of window managers.

How to try another window manager once

You may get this error from the ssh command:

kex_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

Or it might look like this:

ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

These are the most likely reasons for the error:

The Google Play Store for Android devices (largely tablets and phones) offers a massive choice of SSH apps which provide an SSH client and terminal emulator combined, allowing your device to login to Informatics machines. Popular ones include JuiceSSH, Termius and ConnectBot but there are dozens available, many for free.

The "Informatics-InfNets-Forum" and "Informatics-EdLAN-Forum" configuration files and the corresponding -AT versions tunnel only Informatics traffic and EdLAN traffic respectively, leaving all your other traffic to go out through your ISP's default route.

We normally recommend those, as they're generally more efficient and robust, but they do have the potential issue that traffic to other sites will have your ISP-provided address, and so anyone basing authorization decisions on that address won't see you as being a University person. "Informatics-AllNets-Forum" (and ...-AT) is provided as a workaround for that situation. It tunnels all traffic over the OpenVPN tunnel, and so to the outside it appears that you have an EdLAN address. Unfortunately that does have some side-effects.