IDL & ENVI System Requirements - Platform Support

A network interface card (NIC or Ethernet) is required for software-based node-locked and floating licenses. The following table describes the supported platforms and operating systems for IDL and ENVI.

^a For UNIX and Mac OS X, the supported versions indicate that IDL and ENVI were either built on (the lowest version listed) or tested on that version. You can install and run IDL and ENVI on other versions that are binary compatible with those listed.

^b For Mac OS X on Intel-based computers, version 10.4.8 or later and the X11 Update version 1.1.2 (November 2006) are required.

^c If your version of Linux is compatible with the listed kernel and glibc versions, you should be able to install and run IDL and ENVI.

^d The IDL Workbench requires the GTK+ library version 2.4 or later. Printing functionality in the Workbench requires GTK+ library version 2.10 or later. If GTK+ version 2.4 or later is not available, IDL will only run in console mode.

^e IDL may not install correctly on a pure 64-bit Linux system. If installation fails, install your platform's 32-bit compatibility libraries.

32-bit and 64-bit Versions

On UNIX platforms that provide 64-bit support, you can run IDL or ENVI as either a 32-bit or a 64-bit application. When both versions are installed, the 64-bit version is the default. You can run the 32-bit version by specifying the -32switch at the command line, as follows:

% idl -32 or %idlde
% envi -32
% envizoom -32

Under Microsoft Windows, the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are started via separate Start menu entries.

Graphics Hardware

Some IDL and ENVI Zoom features take advantage of graphics hardware that supports the OpenGL 2.0 interface to improve rendering performance, if such hardware is present. Your video card should support OpenGL 2.0 or higher to take advantage of the graphics features in IDL and ENVI Zoom. Be sure to update your video card drivers with the most recent version.

To enable ENVI Zoom to use your computer's graphics card, select File → Preferences from the ENVI Zoom menu bar. Select Display General on the left side of the ENVI Zoom Preferences dialog. Set the Use Graphics Card to Accelerate Enhancement Tools preference to Yes. All of the following criteria must be met for this preference to be effective:

• Set the Zoom Interpolation Method preference to Nearest Neighbor.
• The image data type must be byte, integer, unsigned integer, or floating-point.
• Your platform must be Windows or Linux.

Platform Support Questions and Answers

The ITT Visual Information Solutions Technical Support department maintains a list of common platform and operating system support questions and answers. Please see Tech Tip 3635 on the ITT Visual Information Solutions Web site for additional information.

Software Requirements

The following table describes the software requirements for IDL:

Feature Support by Operating System

IDL Features

IDL technologies not listed in this table are assumed to work on all supported platforms.

ENVI Features

The following ENVI features are provided in addition to the features listed above for IDL. ENVI technologies not listed in this table are assumed to work on all supported platforms.