This is a short summary of the new features of the Unix/Linux version of POV-Ray.

POV-Ray 3.6 for Unix comes in two different versions - for x86 Linux there is a binary package available, for all other Unix systems you need to compile POV-Ray from source, but don't worry, on a correctly configured system this works without problems.

The documentation of POV-Ray 3.6 for Unix comes in a new layout that is much better to read and to navigate than before.

Here are two examples how it looks in Mozilla 1.5 and Konqueror 3.2.1:

The x86-linux binary package (povlinux.tgz) now comes with an interactive install script. It allows to install POV-Ray 3.6 system wide (with root privileges) as well as only for the individual user. Configuration files are created and updated as necessary.

As with POV-Ray 3.5 the package contains a statically linked binary to avoid dependency issues. It automatically detects the environment and chooses SVGALib or X11 display.

The source package of POV-Ray for Unix uses the autoconf / automake system to configure the source for the system to compile on. Compilation has been tested on various platforms so in most cases the standard configure && make && make install will be sufficient to build and install POV-Ray.

The required support libraries (zlib, libpng, libjpeg, libtiff) are included in the source package and will automatically be build when they are not installed on the system. SVGALib or X11 display support will be included when the required libraries are available.

Compatibility of the source code with 64 bit systems has been much improved, all features should work now without manual tweaks.

The install script of the binary package can also create several useful entries in the KDE Panel to view the documentation, edit the configuration files and invoke other useful functions. In addition file types for POV-Ray scenes and include files are registered.

POV-Ray for Unix comes with a set of shell scripts to automatically render the sample scenes included in the distribution and generate HTML files listing these scenes so you can easily browse through the samples.