Advice required on non MS OS

I've used IRAF on SuSE 9.1 (Linux) and Solaris 9 and 10 SPARC (and the one after 10 that marketing will probably decide to call 11!). The Xserver in Solaris seemed to work a little better with ds9<->IRAF than the Xorg one in Linux distros, but not enough to sway a decision (just worth of an occasional curse!).

You'll also want to make sure that ds9
hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/ runs on your chosen OS because ximtool is way out of date.

IRAF is tricky to install, tricky to get your head around if you are not used to old UNIX, and one of the most un-user friendly programs ever created. Granted it has evolved into this over 15 years rather then by any design. Oh and most of the docs are out of date.

If people are interested I can write up a tutorial on getting it installed and on how to do some of the basics of processing (combining flats, darks, combining images, removing cosmic rays etc. etc.)? I've already aged noticable from reading the docs

Your only choice is a Linux distro since the development is done on Solaris SPARC and not x86 so there is no x86 port. Any of the latest linux distros will do contrary to most of their web pages they are all more or less the same with more or less the same stuff on them. None will include IRAF by default.

Cheers,
~Al

Sorry Steve - this is where suffer severely from a technical background re non-MS OS's - is Fedora on the list (but in the guise of say Redhat)?

Cheers

Dave McD

Redhat was one of the original distros of Linux and went under that name until recently. Now Redhat is a corporate only distribution and the community one is called Fedora. It's essentially Redhat 10 but re-branded to Fedora Core and the OS aimed at home users. Think Windows 2000 vs Windows 98.

As it's a complete re-write (think NT4 to Windows 2000) there's a possibility that the software won't work on it. Drop them a mail and ask. Redhat 6.2 is still available from LinuxISO anyway if Fedora is incompatible.

Hi Dave,

I'd recommend Solaris, it's free to download and Sun know what they are doing. I have a copy on my laptop if you want it. Used to use Solaris a lot when I was working on stuff for Lucent, and I was always impressed by how easy it was to use.. As for stability, if the telco's rely on it so can you.
Sun are pushing this hell for leather, and the community is growing.

You can check up your Hardware's compatility here... www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/

Any other questions you can find the answers here
nz.sun.com/learnabout/solaris/10/move.html

Hope this helps,

DaveP

Ah, just checked in the correct directory ftp://iraf.noao.edu/iraf/v212/PCIX/
There is a version for Solaris on x86.

Cheers,
~Al

Solaris will also take advantage of any AMD 64 bit architecture processors too- making it unreasonably fast!
I know you're running an Intel chip dave, but just thought it was worth mentioning)))

Folks - I really appreciate all your advice. So....

I'm just downloading Solaris 10 and I'll give it a whirl, so I'm sure I'll be asking for more advice, especially when I have to reformat all my hard-drives and require therapy for having lost 10 years+ worth of work

I have a copy of partitionmagic so I guess that will come into the equation somewhere...

Steve - I figured that Fedora must've been something as you describe.

Al - if it doesn;t require you to go through any therapy, I'd love to see some kind of idiots guide.

Dave - with broadband, I can download Solaris 10 and probably get it quicker than you can drive over :lol: But I appreciate the offer anyhow!

Thanks again to all you really wonderful folks out there.

Cheers

Dave McD

ps Now I know why I like windows so much