Spinal Cord Research Centre







SCRC Data Capture and Analysis Software
Supported Operating Systems

Our data capture and analysis software has been ported to various UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems over the years. Here are the current standings for the operating systems we support.

O/S Versions Current Status
Red Hat Linux RHEL 4, 5, 6 or 7, Fedora 6 through 24 Supported
We now recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 or 7, or its clones like Scientific Linux or CentOS 6.x & 7.x, for data capture and analysis. RHEL 4 & 5 and its clones, like Scientific Linux 4.x/5.x, will also work (though they no longer get OS security updates). Fedora Core 6, or Fedora 7 to 24 are supported as well. Note that Fedora 23 and older are no longer being updated by the developers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and older have not been tested, but will likely work, possibly requiring a recompiling of the source RPM package. RHEL 5 will no longer be updated after March 2017, so new systems should now be set up with RHEL 6 or 7 or clones for ongoing support.

For data capture, you will need a UEI PowerDAQ II PCI A/D card, or a National Instruments M-series PCI multifunction A/D card. See our system requirements for details. (For RHEL 4, 5 or 6, or FC6 and up, you should use the 3.6.20 or later driver. Fedora 11 or later requires a patched version of the PowerDAQ 3.6.20 driver, or the 3.6.21 or later driver, so it can work on its 2.6.29 or later Linux kernel. Kernel versions above 2.6.32 (e.g. 3.x and 4.x series) must use the latest PowerDAQ driver, versions 3.6.24 or 3.6.26, including patches for kernel versions above 3.14. We recommend using the latest kernel update for your Linux distribution.)
Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy) or later Supported
Though not tested as thoroughly as Red Hat systems, we have packages available for Ubuntu 7.10 or later systems for both capture and analysis. Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) and later versions (up to 16.04 LTS) have only received a bit of testing, but will likely work as well. Other Ubuntu/Debian derivative systems may work, but we haven't tested any of these recently.
Red Hat Linux RH 6.2 through 8.0, Fedora 1 through 4 Unsupported
We can no longer build or test update packages for our software on these systems, so they are now unsupported. Existing installations may still work, but cannot be updated. Red Hat Linux 9 will work, but there are performance problems on it that make it less favourable than Red Hat 8.0 or FC1-4. For FC1 you must have installed kernel-2.4.22-1.2188.nptl or later to run reliably with the PowerDAQ driver! For FC2, you must use the 3.6.7 or later PowerDAQ driver and a 2.6.9 or later kernel. For FC3 and up, you should use the 3.6.20 or later driver. We recommend using the latest kernel update for your Linux distribution. Note that none of these versions are currently being updated by Red Hat.
Red Hat Linux RH 6.1 or earlier Unsupported
Red Hat 4.2 through 6.1 had been supported for analysis-only, but we no longer rebuild the RPM packages for these legacy systems. We recommend that you upgrade these to a current Red Hat version to allow installation of SCRC software updates.

However, with an X11 server package installed, any Linux system supports remote X11 display (see below).
Other Linux various distributions Unsupported
Slackware 2.3 through 3.0 had been supported for analysis-only, but we no longer test or build the package for these legacy systems. Other Linux distributions have never been tested. Newer distributions that support RPM package installation (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake) may very well support our RPM packages, possibly requiring a recompiling of the source RPM package. However, as we have no experience with these distributions, support for them would suffer as a result.

However, with an X11 server package installed, Linux systems support remote X11 display (see below).
macOS 10.9 and up Unsupported for now
The analysis software cannot currently run successfully on more recent macOS systems. The crashes seem to be due to either a conflict in X11 libraries or a change in memory or string handling functions. We hope to address this problem sometime this summer or fall, but until then macOS native builds are not supported.

Howeve, with the XQuartz package installed, macOS 10.9 and up supports remote X11 display (see below).
Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.8 Supported
Data capture is not yet supported on OS X, but the analysis-only package is fully supported. It has recently been tested on 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) systems using the XQuartz App. Versions 10.9 and later have not been tested yet, but should also work, possibly with minor updates to the software. It also works on older versions of Mac OS X: 10.2 (Jaguar) with Apple's X11 Public Beta 3 release of the X Window system, 10.3 (Panther) & 10.4 (Tiger), with Apple's X11 package installed. 10.5 & 10.6 have not been tested.

Also, with the XQuartz or X11 package installed, Mac OS X 10.2 and up supports remote X11 display (see below).
QNX 4.23, 4.24 Unsupported
QNX 4.23 and 4.24 were used for data capture until support for capture on Linux became available in the summer of 2000. QNX systems used a UEI WIN-30D A/D card. See our QNX system requirements for details. We don't do any new installations of QNX systems, and existing installations are no longer supported.
Masscomp RTU 4.0 through 6.0 Unsupported
Masscomp/Concurrent RTU systems were used for data capture until support for capture on QNX became available in 1997. We no longer have access to, test on, or support our software on RTU.
Other UNIX various Unsupported
Our analysis-only package has been ported to AIX, SunOS, Solaris, NeXTSTEP and IRIX at various times in the past. We no longer have access to, test on, or support our software on these systems.

However, most UNIX systems do support remote X11 display (see below).
Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7, & 10 Supported
While not strictly a native Windows application, our analysis-only package can now run under Cygwin/X on a Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 10 system. You can also run a supported Linux system under Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 10 using various virtualization techniques. Either of these setups support our analysis-only package, which can also do networked data capture from a dedicated Linux-based capture server. Data capture from a Windows-based National Instruments A/D board or USB device and driver is now supported as well, though only tested with the NI USB-6210 so far. A Cygwin/X installation requires at least 700 MB of disk space. We previously supported the "andLinux" virtualization method under Windows, but this is no longer supported as it hasn't been updated in quite some time. These setups are described in more detail in our tutorial 19 (Analyze Anywhere).

We have also done some testing using Windows 10 64-bit systems running Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and the Ubuntu Linux bash shell environment. We have gotten the data capture and analysis software working reliably in this environment, using the 64-bit version of VcXsrv for display, and the NI DAQ driver and server software mentioned above. This seems to be a promising alternative to Cygwin or virtual machines. A WSL installation will use up about 2 GB of disk space.

Also, Windows systems do support remote X11 display (see below).
Microsoft Windows 3.x, 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 Unsupported
Our analysis-only package has not been ported to older versions of Windows, and these will soon be unsupported by Cygwin as well.

With older versions of X Window sofware for Windows, these systems may support remote X11 display (see below).
Remote X11 X11R6 or earlier Supported
Our analysis software is based on the X Window System, X11. Therefore, it can be run remotely from any system which can run an X Window display server. This means you can run applications on any system on your network that is supported by our software, but display the results locally on your own workstation, whether it supports we support that system or not. Almost any UNIX or UNIX-like operating system, including Mac OS X, either comes with an X11 display server, or has one available for it.

There are also several X Window display packages available for Microsoft Windows, so that you can run the analysis software from your Windows desktop - with the application running on another UNIX/Linux-based system on your network. Users will likely find this is much more convenient than running a dual-boot Linux/Windows system, and rebooting back and forth between operating systems.

Here at the University of Manitoba, we use StarNet's X-Win32 package, as we have a site license for it. There are also the free, open-source packages Cygwin/X, VcXsrv (including the Xsrv+PuTTY on a Stick package we put together), and Xming which can be used on Windows systems.

For Mac systems, we recommend using XQuartz.


See also: SCRC Software On-line Documentation





© Copyright 2017 G. R. Detillieux, Spinal Cord Research Centre, University of Manitoba. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us for more information.
Revised July 12, 2017.