Christophe Pallier [email protected] 11 Oct. 2025
This how-to provides step-by-step instructions to set up a PC with the psychology experiments generators expyriment and psychopy.
-
Install fresh Ubuntu 24.04
- when asked, choose extented selection of software, and check "installation of third party software" and "support for additional media"
- create an account "neurostim" with the usual password
-
update the system's packages and install a few more
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt install vim git curl openssh-server tmux build-essential
sudo apt install libssl-dev libffi-dev libncurses5-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libreadline-dev libbz2-dev
sudo apt install libsqlite3-dev make gcc liblzma5 tk-dev libsqlite3-0 libgtk-3-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev
sudo apt install portaudio19-dev libasound2-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-2.0-0 libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0
- Install visual studio code
sudo snap install code --classic
- Install the python package manager uv
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
source $HOME/.local/bin/env
- Create a virtual environement in
$HOME$/.venvand install expyriment
cd
uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
echo "source .venv/bin/activate" >> $HOME/.bashrc # this will become the default python virtualenv
uv pip install numpy pandas matplotlib seaborn ipython jupyter
uv pip install expyriment
expyriment -D
expyriment -T
- Install psychopy.
sudo groupadd --force psychopy
sudo usermod -a -G psychopy $USER
sudo bash -c 'printf "@psychopy - nice -20\n@psychopy - rtprio 50\n@psychopy - memlock unlimited\n" >>/etc/security/limits.d/99-psychopylimits.conf'
# run psychopy
uvx --python 3.10 --with https://extras.wxpython.org/wxPython4/extras/linux/gtk3/ubuntu-24.04/wxPython-4.2.2-cp310-cp310-linux_x86_64.whl psychopy