Dave Mills' Linux for Astronomy

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Dave Mills has sent me several copies of his "Linux for Astronomy" that I 
can redistribute to those working on tass.

I had to fuss a little to get it working on Mandrake, but I suspect the 
rest of you will have little trouble.  Note that I gave iraf the old 
college try some time back and failed.  Dave was quick to answer my 
questions and got me over the rough points.

There is a nice menu that comes up and you can select which programs you 
want to load.  Iraf just loaded.  Lots of other things too.  All the 
documentation is there in one easy to access spot.  All in all, a very nice 
job of collecting everything together in one spot where it is very easy to 
load.

Some of you are good at scarfing such things from the net.  For those of 
you who do not want to spend the time searching the net for the latest 
versions of thing and figuring out how to run them, this distribution is 
for you.  Also all this would take me about a year to load with my slow 
connection.

I paid for my own copy, since I believe in paying for good value.  It is 
the simple Libertarian principal that if someone does not pay, then Dave 
will not do the work.  Still, I have several copies to give away.  Priority 
for the give away will be:

1) Students working on tass data

2) People with children under 6 years old working on tass data.  They never 
have any money to spend on goodies for themselves.

3) Retirees living on a pension that has lost value due to the stock 
market.

The rest of you, I think, should buy your own copy if you want the 
stuff.  I will listen to arguments as to why you can't afford a 
copy.  Those of you overseas will have to figure out what to do about 
customs.  I will label it a gift and declare Dave's price.  Note that this 
is the latest version, V7,8,9.  Again thanks to Dave for supporting 
tass.  The web site is at www.randomfactory.com

Tom Droege