Celestia/Installation
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[edit] Introduction
Celestia can easily be installed on computers running Windows, MacOS or Linux. If you have the necessary experience, it also can be compiled and installed on computers running other operating systems.
The current version of Celestia is available by way of the download page on the Celestia Web site. The links on that page actually point to files in Celestia's repository on SourceForge.
Older versions of Celestia are also available from SourceForge.
Prereleases of the next version of Celestia are usually announced on the Celestia Web Forum in its Users Forum. They are not available on SourceForge.
[edit] Windows
If you have downloaded the Windows version of the Celestia installation executable, then you simply need to run the .EXE file you downloaded.
Windows XP is the preferred OS at the moment, but you can also setup Celestia in Windows Vista.
A few words of caution to Windows Vista users, however...
If you run the setup program as a Windows XP-compatible application, you'll find that the program runs fine and that Celestia operates as it should. You can also run the Celestia executable in the native Windows Vista mode too.
Savvy Windows XP users will find that there are a lot of things to get used to in the XP-compatible mode though. If you modify a planet texture, for example, you may find that your modified texture was NOT saved to the Celestia program directory where you got it from originally.
Vista likes to create shortcuts to modified textures, and these - for some reason - aren't readily available to the Celestia program. If you're using Windows Explorer to view the Celestia texture files, click on the "Compatibility Files" area at the top of your screen to see your modified texture. If you like, you can then copy and/or move the new texture to the C:\Program Files\Celestia\textures directory of your choice.
Recommendation:
Vista users should install Celestia as a native Vista program. When Celestia is installed as a previous version of Windows-compatible program, it simply causes more problems than it solves.
