PixInsight for Linux Now Available (1.0.21.279 RC5)

[Pleiades]

Hello all,

We're excited to announce that the first version of PixInsight for Linux is now available and can be downloaded:

http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/export/PI32-linux-i686sse2-01.00.21.279rc5-20070511.tar.gz

It is PixInsight Core version 1.0.21.279 RC5 for i686/SSE2 processors (>= Pentium IV HT), and it needs an active Internet connection to work, as usual. It expires on May 17.

Soon we'll have the first Linux version for 64-bit processors, as well as a full PCL (PixInsight Class Library) distribution package for Linux.

With this version we are reaching a dream that started some three years ago: to achieve a high-performance image processing platform available on the main operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X, and MS Windows. Now it remains Mac OS X, but the path has started and is well oriented in the right direction.

Anyway, the availability of PixInsight on Linux opens some doors to an environment that we think is essential for the development of our project: the academic and free-software communities. Windows is and will be the most used operating system, nobody can seriously disagree with this. But it is also very clear, at least for us, that Linux is the operating system that PixInsight deserves.

Installation Notes

The distribution package is a gzipped tar archive (tar.gz). To install the application, extract the full contents of the archive on any directory, preferably on one located under your home directory. Assuming that you have downloaded the tar.gz archive on your home directory, the required commands would look like these:

Code: [Select]

cd ~
mkdir PixInsight
cd PixInsight
tar -xzf ../PI32-linux-i686sse2-01.00.21.279rc5-20070511.tar.gz

Now we have extracted all necessary files on a PixInsight directory under our home directory. To run the core PixInsight application, you must launch a shell script file that is located on the bin installation directory. Following the above sequence:

./bin/PixInsight32.i686.sh

or also:

~/PixInsight/bin/PixInsight32.i686.sh

The application cannot be executed directly; it is mandatory to run it by launching the shell script mentioned above.

Installation on SELinux Systems

On systems with SELinux (Security-Enforced Linux) active, you must authorize execution of shared libraries before attempting to run PixInsight. This can be achieved with the following command:

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cd ~/PixInsight/bin
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t *.so

This has to be done only once, or each time that you delete the directory to install a new version of PixInsight.

Notes on Linux Color Management

As of releasing this version of PixInsight, there is no standardized color management system on Linux. We have therefore adopted some decisions that we think are the most logical compromise solutions. The first time PixInsight is executed on a Linux system, it looks for the following directory:

/usr/share/color/icc

If this directory exists, then PixInsight considers it as the global directory for ICC profile storage on the whole system. If the above directory doesn't exist, then PixInsight looks for the color/icc directory under its own installation path (for example, ~/PixInsight/color/icc). We have included a sRGB ICC profile on this directory to be used by default.

In any of the two scenarios described above, PixInsight will try to find an ICC profile corresponding to the sRGB space, then it will assign that profile to the primary monitor. If it doesn't find a valid sRGB profile on none of the locations mentioned (which is highly improbable if the application has been correctly installed), then the color management subsystem will not be available.

If your monitor is not well characterized by the sRGB color space (which is infrequent for low and medium-end LCD monitors), you should change to the appropriate profile. In this case you have to edit the following text file:

~/.config/PleiadesAstrophoto/PixInsight-1.0.conf

Find the [Global] section. For example, this can be a typical configuration:

[Global]
ColorManagement\DefaultEmbedProfiles=true
ColorManagement\DefaultRenderingIntent=0
ColorManagement\Enabled=true
ColorManagement\GrayscaleProfilePath=/home/juan/PixInsight/color/icc/sRGB_IEC61966-2.1.icc
ColorManagement\OnMissingProfile=2
ColorManagement\OnProfileMismatch=1
ColorManagement\RGBProfilePath=/home/juan/PixInsight/color/icc/sRGB_IEC61966-2.1.icc

You just have to add the following line:

ColorManagement\MonitorProfilePath=/home/juan/PixInsight/color/icc/MyMonitorProfile.icc

assuming that MyMonitorProfile.icc is the correct ICC profile for your monitor. From now on, PixInsight will use that profile to characterize the behavior of your monitor, achieving in this way a coherent color management for your images.

If you want to use more profiles, there are a number of resources on the Internet where you can obtain free ICC profiles. One of them is Adobe (Adobe RGB 1998, etc). However, we haven't included the "free" Adobe profiles in our distribution because we don't agree with the terms of the associated license. If you want to use Adobe profiles, you'll have to download and install them manually.

We hope you'll like and enjoy PixInsight for Linux as much as we have enjoyed working on it. Please inform us about any installation or execution problems. We have used Fedora Core 6 to develop and test PixInsight, but there are so many Linux distributions out there that it is relatively easy to find some where PixInsight won't run...

Best regards
_____________________________________________________________
Juan Conejero, Pleiades Software
PixInsight Project Home Page: http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/