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56	56	**Slide** listing prerequisites
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58	58
59		-I shall be demonstrating the installation on a computer with Ubuntu 20.04 OS installed. The steps are likely to remain very similar for other versions of Ubuntu OS, and also not expected to vary significantly for other Linux distributions. In the latter case, you will find on the Internet about how to carry out the equivalent of the tasks demonstrated here using Ubuntu OS. Also, the tutorial will focus only on Python 3, as Python 2 has now been deprecated. It is recommended to use Python version 3.6 or higher. I would be using Python 3.9.7 in this tutorial.
	59	+I shall be demonstrating the installation on a computer with Ubuntu 20.04 OS installed. The steps are likely to remain very similar for other versions of Ubuntu OS, and also not expected to vary significantly for other Linux distributions. In the latter case, you will find on the Internet about how to carry out the equivalent of the tasks demonstrated here using Ubuntu OS. Also, the tutorial will focus only on Python 3, as Python 2 has now been deprecated. It is recommended to use Python version 3.6 or higher. I would be using Python 3.8.10 in this tutorial, as it is the default version provided with Ubuntu 20.04.
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	61	+(% class="box errormessage" %)
	62	+(((
	63	+**Note:**
	64	+Having multiple versions of Python on your system can produce issues while installing NEST. The method shown below will install NEST for the default version of Python provided by your Ubuntu OS. E.g. for Ubuntu 18.04 this might be Python 3.6.9 and for Ubuntu 20.04 it will likely be 3.8.10. If you wish to associate the NEST installation with a different Python version installed on your system, please refer the NEST installation instructions to do so on their website.
	65	+)))
	66	+
61	61	(% class="box infomessage" %)
62	62	(((
63	63	**Screencast** - terminal
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75	75	cd pynn_project
76	76	)))
77	77
78		-Next we shall create a virtual environment within this directory. Python 3 provides intrinsic support for creating virtual environments. Since Python 3.6, the recommended method of creating a new virtual environment is as follows:
	84	+Next we shall create a virtual environment within this directory. Python 3 provides support for creating virtual environments. Since Python 3.6, the recommended method of creating a new virtual environment is as follows:
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80	80	(% class="box errormessage" %)
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141	141
142	142	If there are no error messages here, and the import is successful, then we have completed installing Brian 2.
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	150	+We shall now move on to install the NEST simulator. Unlike Brian 2, NEST is not a Python package and therefore it cannot be installed via the 'pip' command.
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145		-We shall now move on to install the NEST simulator. Unlike Brian 2, NEST is not a Python package and therefore its installation is a bit more involved. We shall install the NEST module along with PyNEST, which is a Python interface for controlling the NEST kernel.
	152	+At the time of creating this tutorial, the lastest version of NEST is v3.1. This is currently supported by PyNN v0.10, and it is likely that other versions of NEST could potentially be incompatible with this version of PyNN. The installation is done by first adding the PPA repository for NEST and updating apt, followed by the installation of NEST itself.
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147		-We first install the NEST module. Version 2.20 is currently supported by PyNN, and it is likely that other versions of NEST might have issues when used with the current version of PyNN. The installation is done by first adding the PPA repository for NEST and updating apt, followed by the installation of NEST itself.
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149	149	(% class="box infomessage" %)
150	150	(((
151	151	**Screencast** - terminal
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154	154	\\sudo apt-get install nest
155	155	)))
156	156
157		-At this point, we have installed the NEST module, but it is still not usable via Python. To do so, we next install PyNEST.
	162	+This installs the NEST module along with PyNEST, which is a Python interface for controlling the NEST kernel. This allows us to use NEST via Python. To confirm that we have properly installed Brian 2 on our computer, we can test as follows:
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	164	+(% class="box infomessage" %)
	165	+(((
	166	+**Screencast** - terminal
	167	+\\(% style="color:#000000" %)python3
	168	+\\import nest
	169	+\\exit()
	170	+)))
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	172	+If there are no error messages here, and the import is successful, then we have completed installing NEST simulator.
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	174	+We next move on to the third simulation, NEURON. The installation for NEURON is a bit more involved.
	175	+
	176	+<< add more >>
	177	+
161	161	(% class="box successmessage" %)
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163	163	**Slide** recap of learning objectives
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181	181
182	182	(% class="wikigeneratedid" %)
183	183	[[https:~~/~~/realpython.com/python-virtual-environments-a-primer/>>https://realpython.com/python-virtual-environments-a-primer/]]
	201	+[[https:~~/~~/briansimulator.org/install/>>https://briansimulator.org/install/]]
	202	+[[https:~~/~~/nest-simulator.readthedocs.io/en/v3.1/installation/index.html>>https://nest-simulator.readthedocs.io/en/v3.1/installation/index.html]]