Installing PixInsight on Linux (Ubuntu)

[Jonny_H]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can assist me with this.

My laptop is fairly ancient and struggles now with Windows, so i thought i would install Linux and give that a go.

I have installed pretty much all of my software including APP, however I am really struggling with PixInsight.  It seems you have to have a degree in computer coding to install it!

Ive got as far as downloading the PixInsight file and extracting it to my home directory as per the instructions, but i cannot for the life of me follow the example coding on the PixInsight website or forum to actually install it!

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

Regards,

Jon

Edited January 13, 2022 by Jonny_H

[scotty38]

Assuming you extracted something like this:

 

open a terminal (command prompt) in this location and type:

sudo ./installer

You should be asked for your password and then answer yes to the install question. Should be all you need to do.

[Jonny_H]

Thanks @scotty38

I have got to the stage where it has installed using your commands above (this was what several forums stated but it must have been the folder naming conventions which caused the initial issues).

However where is the actual 'exe' to open PI once it is installed? It doesn't appear in the applications menu like, for example, APP does?

Sorry for all the questions....I'm new to Linux as you've probably figured out

Edited January 14, 2022 by Jonny_H

[Jonny_H]

7 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Assuming you extracted something like this:

 

open a terminal (command prompt) in this location and type:

sudo ./installer

You should be asked for your password and then answer yes to the install question. Should be all you need to do.

Thanks @scotty38

I have got to the stage where it has installed using your commands above (this was what several forums stated but it must have been the folder naming conventions which caused the initial issues).

However where is the actual 'exe' to open PI once it is installed? It doesn't appear in the applications menu like, for example, APP does?

Sorry for all the questions....I'm new to Linux as you've probably figured out 

[scotty38]

26 minutes ago, Jonny_H said:

However where is the actual 'exe' to open PI once it is installed? It doesn't appear in the applications menu like, for example, APP does?

 

I'n not on my Linux machine right now but I think it's in the "Education" menu, well it is on Kubuntu, not sure about Ubuntu and Gnome. Let me look at some images of Gnome and see if I can work it out for you but I think you should be able to run Pixinsight --default-modules in a terminal.

If you move your mouse to the top left (I think) corner do you get the apps screen pop up?

Edited January 14, 2022 by scotty38

[Jonny_H]

1 hour ago, scotty38 said:

I'n not on my Linux machine right now but I think it's in the "Education" menu, well it is on Kubuntu, not sure about Ubuntu and Gnome. Let me look at some images of Gnome and see if I can work it out for you but I think you should be able to run Pixinsight --default-modules in a terminal.

If you move your mouse to the top left (I think) corner do you get the apps screen pop up?

Thank you.

I just rebooted and can now see the PI app within the applications folder. Perhaps I was being impatient before and just needed to wait a bit for the app to appear following installation!

[scotty38]

Good news, glad it's working. As an aside I run PI on a dual boot machine (i5,16GB, 1TB SSD so not that great) but it runs way faster under Linux than Windows so I think you'll be happy with the performance increase.

Just check your global preferences if you have SSD as changes in .10 or .11 introduced:

 

The number of file reading and writing threads is now 8 by default. We are no longer optimized for obsolete rotational disks. We now offer a reasonable default number of I/O threads for SSD devices. However, please note that the optimal number of I/O threads depends on a variety of hardware and software related factors, and must be found through benchmarks. For fast NVMe devices on systems with 32 or more logical processors, 16 or 24 I/O threads can be a good starting point.