How to run the Galaxy RNA workbench on your laptop using Kitematic

Non-linux users might have a hard time dealing with the set-up that is needed behind the scenes of a working Docker environment. For this reason, the Kitematic tool was created to run Docker containers through a simple user interface.

The Galaxy RNA workbench, already available on Docker Hub as a Docker container, can therefore be launched via Kitematic. Here, the interface provides a search function to look for the desired Docker container on Docker Hub, enabling users to directly load containers within it.

This article shows how to install Kitematic, and run the Galaxy RNA workbench: a web environment for transparent, reproducible, computational research.

As of now, Kitematic is in an alpha stage, and it is therefore mandatory to check the software requirements for your software envoronment on their page. The installation procedure however is really straightforward. Here we provide a screencast highlighting the steps needed to perform such a task

Alternatively, you can have a look on how to do that step by step. The RNA workbench online documentation provides screenshots on how to do so for both Windows users and MacOSX users.

Once the installation is completed, you can readily try carrying out computational workflows leveraging on the Galaxy platform by trying the RNA workbench. Here we provide a screencast showing the steps needed to load the workbench, and start playing with it.

Where to from here?

If you’re not at all familiar with Galaxy, or you wold like to try one of its workflows as to acquire a birds eye view of its many functionalities, the Galaxy RNA workbench provides example interactive tours. These illustrate how the main interface works in relation to a real-life user task or analysis. Tours highlight each step of the workflow, documenting its building blocks. They can be started and paused, leaving the user the ability to resume a tour, or stop it alltogether.

The following screencast shows the introductory Galaxy tour, which highlights the main components of its web interface. More tours can be selected. Have a look

Enjoy! 🙂