brainBrain Workshop - Mac OS X & Linux Source Distribution Installation Instructions

The installation of Brain Workshop on Mac OS X and Linux requires a few extra steps. Follow these easy instructions to get started with Brain Workshop.


Instructions for Mac OS X

If you have OS X 10.3 or higher, try downloading the Brain Workshop 4.8.1 application bundle for Mac OS X (Universal PPC/x86).

Alternatively, use the source distribution as described below.

Note: Some users have reported issues with Brain Workshop on Mac OS X 10.3.9. Release 10.4 or higher is recommended.

  1. First, download and install Python 2.5.2:

  2. If you would like music support (recommended), download and install AVBin by following these steps:

    1. Download AVBin 5 for Mac OS X
    2. Open a terminal and change the directory to the location of the file you just downloaded. For example, if you downloaded it to your desktop, you would open a terminal and type cd Desktop .
    3. Type unzip avbin-darwin-universal-5.zip to unzip the files.
    4. Enter the newly created directory by typing: cd avbin-darwin-universal-5
    5. Install AVBin by typing the following commands exactly:
      1. sudo cp libavbin.5.dylib /usr/lib
      2. cd /usr/lib
      3. sudo ln -s libavbin.5.dylib libavbin.dylib

  3. Finally, download brainworkshop-4.8.1.zip.

  4. Extract the files in the zip file to your hard drive. Important: The program will not work properly if you try to run it from within the zip file.

  5. Double-click brainworkshop.pyw to open the script in IDLE (a Python editor). The source code for Brain Workshop will be displayed in a window.

  6. Press F5 to launch Brain Workshop. (Note: Macbook users need to press Function-F5 instead)

  7. Begin increasing your working memory and fluid intelligence! Get started by reading the Tutorial.

Problems? Questions? Please contact me with details of the issue you are encountering.


Instructions for Linux

Brain Workshop has a few dependencies on Linux.

  1. First, get OpenGL working. Brain Workshop uses OpenGL as a backend for drawing its graphics. Hardware acceleration is strongly recommended, but if it's not available or easy to set up, the Mesa software renderer also works.

    2. Python: Most distributions come with Python preinstalled. Open a terminal and type python to ensure you have Python 2.5 or higher. Python 2.4 will also suffice as long as python-ctypes is installed.

  2. If you would like music support (recommended), download and install AVBin by following these steps:

    1. Download one of the following:
    2. Open a terminal and change the directory to the download destination.
    3. Type tar zxvf avbin-linux-x86-32-7.tar.gz to untar the files. (This example uses the 32-bit version)
    4. Enter the newly created directory by typing: cd avbin-linux-x86-32-7
    5. Install AVBin by typing sudo ./install.sh and entering your password.

  3. Finally, download brainworkshop-4.8.1.zip.

  4. Extract the files in the zip file to your hard drive. Important: The program will not work properly if you try to run it from within the zip file.

  5. Open a terminal, enter the brainworkshop directory and type python brainworkshop.pyw to launch Brain Workshop. You may also enable execute permissions on brainworkshop.pyw if you'd like to launch it by double-clicking.

  6. Begin increasing your working memory and fluid intelligence! Get started by reading the Tutorial.

Note: Many users have reported problems with sound on Ubuntu. This is likely due to the broken implementation of pulseaudio in all versions since 8.10. If you're having problems with sound, there are a few things you can try. First, you can try installing the python-openal package to use the OpenAL sound interface. If that doesn't work, you can try some of the fixes described in the page linked above. Failing that, you can always do sudo apt-get remove pulseadio libpulse0, and either use plain ALSA or install ESD in its place. If one of these fixes or something else works for you, please let us know about it so we can recommend it to other Ubuntu users. If you have sound problems on a different distribution, we'd like to hear about it.

Problems? Questions? Please contact me with details of the issue you are encountering.


Modifying the Source Code

If you'd like to try your hand at making modifications to the Brain Workshop source code, here are some resources which may be of assistance:


Return to the Brain Workshop main page & Tutorial