5.3.1 Available distributions

There are two official distributions of POV-Ray for Unix available:

• Source package: this package contains all the source files and Makefiles required for building POV-Ray. Building the program from source should work on most Unix systems. The package uses a configuration mechanism to detect the adequate settings in order to build POV-Ray on your own platform. All required support libraries are included in the package. See the INSTALL file of the source package for details.
• Linux binary package: this package contains a compiled version of POV-Ray for x86-compatible platforms running the GNU/Linux operating system. A shell script for easy installation is also included. Further details are given in the README file of this package.

Both distributions are available for download at the POV-Ray website and on the POV-Ray FTP server (ftp.povray.org).