What you need for this book
Modern bioinformatics analysis is normally performed on a Linux server. Most of our recipes will also work on Mac OS X. It will also work on Windows in theory, but this is not recommended. If you do not have a Linux server, you can use a free virtual machine emulator such as VirtualBox to run it on a Windows/Mac computer. An alternative that we explore in the book is to use Docker as a container, which can be used on Windows and Mac via boot2docker.
As modern bioinformatics is a big data discipline, you will need a reasonable amount of memory; at least 4 GB on a native Linux machine, probably 8 GB on a Mac/Windows system, but more would be better. A broadband Internet connection will also be necessary to download the real and hands-on datasets used in the book.
Python is a requirement. All the code will work with version 2, although you are highly encouraged to use version 3 whenever possible. Many free Python libraries will also be required and these will be presented in the book. Biopython, NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib are used in almost all chapters. Although the IPython Notebook is not strictly required, it's highly encouraged. Different chapters will also require various bioinformatics tools. All the tools used in the book are freely available and thorough instructions are provided in the relevant chapters of this book.
