Advice required on non MS OS

Ok folks, I need some advice.

After a very informative presentation at the Galway Astronomy Club (thanks Ronan and Michael) on Monday, I am looking to run IRAF (image reduction and analysis facility) on my Intel based PC.

According to the website, IRAF runs on Linux, Redhat, Solaris and SunOS.

I would be very computer literate but have never used anything other than an MS OS PC. I have setup a dual boot system (MSDOS) in the past to facilitate some programming I used to do but that's as far as it goes.

So, what's my best strategy?

I have a partition manager, oodles of hard disk space (I have two hard-drives), a decent PC (pentium IV 933MHz, 390 odd Mb Ram).

I have to run Windows OS to support a host of applications for work and astronomy.

I don't want to spend any money.

Over to you...

Cheers

Dave McD

I don't want to spend any money.

Over to you...

Cheers

Dave McD

Dave,

Linux in general is free anyway. I've recently installed Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings. It's the easiest installation I've ever seen. You won't even need a partition manager as you can repartition as part of the installation and it will set up the dual-boot for you also. I haven't had much time to spare to play with it but my initial feeling is that it's very easy to use. Some friends of mine are using it and love it.

One consideration is your video card - what one do you have? ATI cards aren't very well supported in Linux but they will work once you find the right driver. Ubuntu's support forums are excellent for this. Let me know what video card you have and I'll see if there's a driver available for it.

Ubuntu is based on Debian so you'll also need to check if IRAF has a Debian package available. I'd be surprised if there isn't one.

Hope this helps.

Hi Steve - Free, as in not even having to buy installation CD's is what I'm looking for. Not that I'm stingy but I have boradband so downloading installation files is not an issue.

IRAF runs on:

AIX4 IBM/RS6000 AIX 4.x
DUNX Digital Unix 4.0 (OSF, Compaq Tru64)
HPUX HP-UX 10.20
IRIX SGI IRIX 6.x
PCIX FreeBSD 3.3
PCIX Slackware Linux 4.0
PCIX RedHat Linux 5.x
PCIX RedHat Linux 6.x
PCIX SuSE Linux 6.x
PCIX Solaris 7 for Intel
SSOL SunOS 4.x
SSOL Solaris 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8
VMS7 VAX/VMS 7.1


I don't have a clue if any of those is a Debian Package...

I have a matrox millenium graphics card. Are there any other drivers I need to ensure I obtain? CDRW, DVD etc? I don' t intend (at this moment in time) to use whatever OS as a full-time system - only for the use of IRAF.

Hope this helps....

Cheers

Dave McD

I'm a Fedore Core 3 user myself. Not a bad OS, and looks and feels like what you're used to in a Windoze environment. I can copy the ISO cd's (4 of them) and post to you if you want? Any pentium-based computer is fine.

Seanie.

Linux is definitely the way to go.

The question then becomes WHICH linux!

For a first time Linux install there really are only two options in my opinion, Ubuntu as has already been mentioned or Fedora Core 4.

I've installed both in the last week on various different machines and they are both very easy to install (but I prefer the Fedora installer as it gives you more control and has a much better GUI) and come with a lot of stuff as standard. FC 4 ships with much more than ubuntu (hence ubuntu being only 1 CD and Fedora 4, or alternatively one DVD) so if you don't have broad band I would suggest Fedora as a better option.

The other important thing is that both have excellent package managers, Fedora has yum and ubuntu has the world beating apt. Basically they are both excellent distros and there is very little between them. Personally I prefer Fedora core 4 but that is probably because I am used to the Fedora way since I've been using it since Core 2 rather than any reall difference between the distributions.

What ever you choose I think you'll be pleasently surprised to see just how easy to install and use Linux has become and if you do have any questions or problems feel free to post them here.

Bart.

I'm a Fedore Core 3 user myself. Not a bad OS, and looks and feels like what you're used to in a Windoze environment. I can copy the ISO cd's (4 of them) and post to you if you want? Any pentium-based computer is fine.

Seanie.

Do you want me to send you Fedora Core 4 CDs? Core 4 has signifficantly better hardware suppor tthan Core 3.

BB