Hi Eli and Wade
This is a very strange problem that I haven't seen before. It's true that such behavior might be related to insufficient permissions. However the core application should show error messages in this case, which I assume are not shown.
By default PixInsight writes all temporary files (swap files and autosaved psm files) to the /tmp directory. This is a standard directory that should be present in every Linux/UNIX system, and all users are supposed to have full read/write rights on it.
In the event that /tmp isn't available, PixInsight will use the ~/tmp directory (a tmp directory under the user's personal directory) if it exists, and as a last resort, it would use its own installation directory (which obviously exists). A real-world scenario where PixInsight is unable to write temporary files is very unlikely.
I suspect that this problem might be related to some system library that is incompatible (or causes problems) with other libraries upon which it depends. This is not too unlikely to happen on Linux. A frequent reason is updating the system too often (e.g., automatic updates enabled).
I have several questions to help locating the cause of this problem:
1. Describe your hardware. I am interested in knowing your processor model and number of processors, your motherboard brand/model if possible, your video card brand/model, and the amount of RAM you have installed. Of secondary interest is the size of your hard disk and the free space available on your local filesystem; I assume you have enough space.
2. Try to find a correlation between your upgrade to Ubuntu Dapper and the problems with PixInsight. Three related sub-questions:
2.1 Did you made a fresh installation from scratch, or did you upgrade a working system?. The latter is a *very bad idea*. A fresh installation is actually mandatory, especially with new Linux distributions.
2.2 If you install an old version 1.1.x that was working on your old Linux distro, does it cause problems also with your new Ubuntu Dapper?
2.3 Did you install PixInsight 1.2 on your old distribution? If yes, did it work well?
3. Run PixInsight from a terminal console. In this way we can see any warning messages printed on stdout if they occur, which might be of great help.
4. If you have another Linux box at hand, install and run PixInsight on it to see what happens. It would be great if you could try it on another Ubuntu Dapper installation, preferably a fresh one.
5. Try running PixInsight on the same machine but as a different user, if possible.
6. The idea of making a fresh installation isn't bad, either
We'll find and fix this problem. PixInsight is running on a variety of Linux distributions without flaws, so there's no reason why it shouldn't run on your Ubuntu.
Right now I am too busy with the new PixInsight 1.2.1 release, which is extremely important because it fixes some critical bugs. When I get more time, I'll try to install Ubuntu Dapper on a virtual machine and will explore it.
