Installation

You can find the source code and precompiled binaries for some distribution for the latest Syntalos releases at the Syntalos GitHub releases page.

Installing via Flathub / from the App-Center

Syntalos is available as Flatpak bundle for download via Flathub. The Flatpak’ed version will run on any Linux distribution, but due to Flatpak’s sandbox constraints may need some additional external software installed for certain hardware to work properly. If these components are needed, Syntalos will notify the user.

You can view & download Syntalos on Flathub.org, or install it directly from you software store application (GNOME Software or KDE Discover), if Flatpak is set up with Flathub, which it is on most distributions (with the notable exception being Ubuntu).

If Flathub is not set up, you can find instructions how to set it up here.

For the command-line way to install Syntalos using Flatpak you may execute these commands:

# replace this command with the distribution's native package manager to install Flatpak
sudo apt install flatpak
# set up Flathub
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
# install Syntalos
flatpak install flathub org.syntalos.syntalos

Installing via Packages

Debian

Ensure to have Debian 12 (Bookworm) or later, then install the package via your graphical package manager or via the command-line: sudo apt install ./syntalos_*.deb. You can then launch Syntalos from the application menu or command-line. A -dbgsym package is provided to easily produce debug backtraces in case of crashes, but this package is optional and does not need to be installed.

Ubuntu

Ensure you are on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) or later.

After the PPA is registered, you should be able to install the package via your graphical package manager or the command-line: sudo apt install ./syntalos_*.deb. You can then launch Syntalos from the application menu.

Module dependencies

Some modules require external software to work and will not run or register without it being installed. You can check for any failures during module load by clicking on Diagnostics ➝ Module Loader in the main window. If any issues are listed there, modules failed to load.

ImagingSource Cameras

If you want to use any cameras from The ImagingSource, you will need their tiscamera software. The vendor provides binaries and source code, so you can either install the provided packages or built the component from source.

UCLA Miniscopes

For Miniscope support, Syntalos uses the libminiscope library provided by PoMiDAQ. To use a UCLA Miniscope, compile the project - or just the library - from source or install the provided binary package.

Building from source

We recommend Debian 12 (Bookworm) or Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) to run Syntalos, but any Linux distribution that has a recent enough C++ compiler and Qt version should work.

Some modules may add additional dependencies for libraries to talk to individual devices or for a certain special feature. In case you get a dependency error when running meson, install the missing dependency or try to build with less modules enabled.

Before attempting to build Syntalos, ensure all dependencies (and their development files) are installed on your system. If you are using Debian or Ubuntu, you may choose to locally run the system package installation script that the CI system uses: sudo ./tests/ci/install-deps-deb.sh.

Users of other Linux distributions can refer to the README.md file in the project’s root directory for a list of required dependencies, or look into the mentioned install-deps-deb.sh helper script and adjust it to install the necessary things.

After installing all dependencies, you should be able to build the software after configuring the build with Meson for your platform:

mkdir build && cd build
meson --buildtype=debugoptimized -Doptimize-native=true ..
ninja
sudo ninja install

Modules can be enabled and disabled via the -Dmodules flag - refer to meson_options.txt for a list of possible, comma-separated values.

Installing on Windows

Installing Syntalos on Windows is not advised, as its performance will be significantly worse and its time-synchronization capabilites have not been tested.

It is however a convenient way to just check out the Syntalos UI and play with it. To install it, follow the instructions on install-windows.