5.1.2 What is POV-Ray for Unix?

POV-Ray for Unix is essentially a version of the POV-Ray rendering engine prepared for running on a Unix or Unix-like operating system (such as GNU/Linux). It contains all the features of POV-Ray described in chapters 2 and 3 of the documentation, plus a few others specific to Unix and GNU/Linux systems. These additional features do not affect the core rendering code. They only make the program suitable for running under an Unix-based system, and provide the user with Unix-specific displaying capabilities. For instance, POV-Ray for Unix can use the X Window System to display the image it is rendering. On GNU/Linux machines, it can also display the image directly on the console screen using the SVGA library.

POV-Ray for Unix uses the same scheme as the other supported platforms to create ray-traced images. The POV-Ray input is platform-independant, as it is using text files (POV-Ray scripts) to describe the scene: camera, lights, and various objects. An extensive discussion of the POV-Ray Scene Description Language can be found elsewhere in this documentation.