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SBGrid supported platforms

The SBGrid Software Suite can run on computers running Linux and macOS/OS X operating systems.

Linux

RHEL-based Distributions (x86_64)

SBGrid software is built and tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x and 9.x, and their community-supported versions, Rocky Linux and Alma Linux.

Rocky Linux 10 and Alma Linux 10 are under active testing. Remote desktop access via RealVNC is not yet available on these releases — see Remote Graphics.

CentOS 7 reached end of life June 30, 2024.

Other Linux Distributions (x86_64)

Many labs also use Ubuntu, Mint, Debian and OpenSuSE with SBGrid. We don't explicitly test the software on distributions other than the RHEL-based distros above, but the majority of the software is known to work on Ubuntu 20, 22 and 24. We will work to resolve problems reported by users of these Linux distributions where possible on a best-effort basis.

SBGrid is supported on Amazon Linux 2 (AL2), though a few titles/versions are known to fail due to older OS libraries used in this distribution.

macOS

We build and test programs for macOS under the four most recent macOS releases and support x86_64 and arm64 'Apple Silicon' architectures.

Supported macOS versions

  • macOS 27 "Golden Gate" (2026)
  • macOS 26 "Tahoe" (2025)
  • macOS 15 "Sequoia" (2024)
  • macOS 14 "Sonoma" (2023)

Apple Silicon

"Apple Silicon" arm64 macs can run most of the software in the collection. Few native applications are currently available, but most 64-bit software works through Apple's Rosetta2 compatibility environment. Notable exceptions are applications compiled with Intel compilers (some older Rosetta and RELION versions).

32-bit applications on macOS

Sadly, macOS dropped support for 32-bit applications in macOS 10.14 "Mojave" in 2018. While we still have many 32-bit applications, they are no longer functional on supported versions of macOS.

Windows via WSL

We do not support software for Windows. However, Windows provides a Linux compatibility environment called "Windows Subsystem for Linux 2" (WSL2). WSL2 is under active development. Users have reported success with SBGrid applications working with WSL2, but we have no experience with Windows, don't have test systems, and can't provide support. If you have success with SBGrid and WSL2, let us know. For more information on WSL2, refer to the official Microsoft documentation.