FreeSurfer Release 7 System Requirements

Summary of Requirements:
Operating Systems:
Linux - we use/test CentOS6, CentOS7, Ubuntu18
MacOS - we use/test 10.13 High Sierra, 10.14 Mojave, 10.15 Catalina
Processor Speed: 2.8GHz or higher, at least 2 physical cores
RAM: 16GB or more recommended
Graphics card: 3D graphics card with its own graphics memory & accelerated OpenGL drivers
Size of installed image: 10GB
Typical size of a processed subject: 300MB
Other requirements: Matlab (only needed to run FS-FAST, the fMRI analysis stream)

FreeSurfer 7.0.0 beta 1 Notes


Important Note: When processing a group of subjects for your study, it is essential to process all your subjects with the same version of FreeSurfer, on the same OS platform and vendor, and for safety, even the same version of the OS. While we continue to work to ensure that results match across platforms, there are none-the-less system-level libraries that are OS dependent. An exception to this rule is that you may view and edit files across any platform or version, and run some post-processing tools (outside the recon-all stream) if you check with us first (for instance you may run the longitudinal processing with newer versions).


OS

Build Platform

Version

Release Date

Download

Size

Linux

CentOS 6 x86_64 (64b) tar archive

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

4.4G

Linux

CentOS 6 x86_64 (64b) RPM installer

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

3.7G

Linux

CentOS 7 x86_64 (64b) tar archive

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

4.2G

Linux

CentOS 7 x86_64 (64b) RPM installer

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

3.6G

macOS

MacOS 10.13 (64b Intel) tar archive

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

4.0G

macOS

MacOS 10.13 (64b Intel) PKG installer

7.0.0 beta 1

Feb 2019

link TBD

4.0G

Install and Setup

Linux: On Linux systems, the tar archive file (.tar.gz) can be expanded under any convenient path/subdirectory on your machine you have permission to write to. For example, you can expand the tar archive under your $HOME directory. To install freesurfer under a recommended shared system location, e.g., /usr/local, you will typically need sudo or root privileges. Please note that if you have sudo/root privileges, then you should consider using the RPM file (.rpm) to install the freesurfer 7.0.0 beta 1 release under /usr/local. The linux package management tools provide the advantage of trying to install any software packages freesurfer depends upon that are not already installed on your system as part of installing freesurfer under /usr/local/freesurfer/<package version>.

Example install commands followed by setup commands using the CentOS7 tar archive expanded under the $HOME directory for user "tester" with bash/Bourne shell. No sudo/root privileges are needed.

$ cd $HOME
$ pwd
/home/tester
$ tar zxvpf freesurfer-linux-centos7_x86_64-dev.tar.gz
x freesurfer/
x freesurfer/WMParcStatsLUT.txt
x freesurfer/sessions/
x freesurfer/sessions/README
...
..
<rest of output deleted>

$ cd freesurfer
$ pwd
/home/tester/freesurfer
$ export FREESURFER_HOME=/home/tester/freesurfer
$ export SUBJECTS_DIR=$FREESURFER_HOME/subjects
$ source $FREESURFER_HOME/SetUpFreeSurfer.sh
-------- freesurfer-local-build-xxxxxx --------
Setting up environment for FreeSurfer/FS-FAST (and FSL)
FREESURFER_HOME   /home/tester/freesurfer
FSFAST_HOME       /home/tester/freesurfer/fsfast
FSF_OUTPUT_FORMAT nii.gz
SUBJECTS_DIR      /home/tester/freesurfer/subjects
MNI_DIR           /home/tester/freesurfer/mni

$ which freeview
/home/tester/freesurfer/bin/freeview