I finally installed RedHat9 last night. Not for the NPTL. Not for the O(1) scheduler. Not for the preemptible kernel. But for this really neat KDE (kdeedu) application called KStars.
Basically, it's very similar to Cartes du Ciel or Starry Night, except it runs on Linux. Obviously it's not as powerful as Starry Night (which costs $50), but the feature set is similar to Cartes du Ciel (which is open-source but for Windows only). The only thing missing from KStars is LX200 or ASCOM telescope control. KStars is quite powerful -- in addition to complete NGC, IC, PGC, SAO, Hipparcos, and HD data, it can download Deep Sky Survey (1 or 2), Palomar Sky Survey, or Hubble data for any of the objects it displays. Also, it doesn't consume 100% of the CPU when scrolling (which Cartes and Starry Night do). Of course there is XEphem, which does have LX200 telescope control (as well as it can import photometry data from AAVSO), runs on Motif, and open-source as well. But the interface of XEphem leaves much to be desired -- it's not user-friendly. Well, I'm still using GNOME -- RedHat9 comes with many nice new themes! and I hate the KDE kicker -- but I run KStars under it. Admittedly, even Konqueror has gotten much better compared to the last time I used it. --- Orlando Andico <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mosaic Communications, Inc. -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
