System requirements¶

This page describes the operating system, hardware, storage, and network requirements for installing and running MTD Explorer.

Requirements under validation

The minimum and recommended hardware requirements are currently being validated using clean installations and benchmark runs on different computer configurations.

Supported operating systems¶

MTD Explorer is developed and tested on 64-bit GNU/Linux systems.

Currently tested¶

Linux Mint
Ubuntu-based Linux distributions

Not currently supported¶

Native Microsoft Windows
Native macOS

Windows users may be able to use a Linux server, virtual machine, or WSL2, but these configurations have not yet been formally validated.

Hardware requirements¶

Resource	Minimum	Recommended	Notes
CPU architecture	x86-64	x86-64	ARM64 is not currently validated
CPU threads	Under validation	16 or more	More threads reduce installation and analysis time
RAM	Under validation	Under validation	Database construction is one of the most memory-intensive steps
Free storage	1TB	2TB	Depends on databases, cache, host references, and analysis outputs
Internet connection	Required	Stable broadband	Large reference databases are downloaded during installation

Minimum versus recommended

A computer may be able to run MTD Explorer with less memory or fewer CPU threads, but installation and analysis may take considerably longer.

Storage planning¶

Storage should be available for:

MTD Explorer source code;
Conda environments;
Kraken2 databases;
host reference genomes and indexes;
eggNOG and HUMAnN databases;
the optional reusable installation cache;
input FASTQ files;
analysis outputs and temporary files.

The reusable installation cache may be stored on a separate disk.

Required permissions¶

The user should have:

permission to write inside the MTD Explorer directory;
permission to write to the selected cache directory;
permission to create files in the selected output directory;
sudo access when system packages need to be installed.

MTD Explorer itself should not normally be executed as the root user.

Check your computer¶

Use the following commands before installation.

Operating system¶

cat /etc/os-release

CPU architecture¶

uname -m

Available CPU threads¶

nproc

Available memory¶

free -h

Available disk space¶

df -h

Git availability¶

git --version

Next step¶

Continue to the installation guide.