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Athena is MIT's primary academic computing environment, providing academic software, courseware, and public computing. The primary purpose of Athena is to facilitate teaching and learning, whether part of the curriculum or independent endeavors. Athena provides a consistent desktop environment throughout campus, allowing users to work on academic assignments at any Athena workstation. Tight integration between the operating system and the Athena environment allows for low-cost deployment of software and the creation of a course work environment with minimal effort on the part of instructors. Additionally, many student printing facilities are currently located in the clusters.
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