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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

A great THANK YOU to all the developers of KStars.

  • Posts: 209
  • Thank you received: 33
A great THANK YOU to all the developers of KStars.
I don’t know if this is the right place but I must say it somewhere : A great THANK YOU to all the developers of KStars !
I started to be interested in astronomy quite recently.
But I had a problem : I’m a Macintosh user since ever and I was very reluctant to change my environment.
After some times I found the app TheSkyX which is build to run on Windows and Mac.
After having bought all their “add-ons” (and for what price !) I was completely unsatisfied by this program : uneasy to use, unfriendly interface when it works !, and - I must say it - a very poor support (I’ve seen bugs being corrected seven years after they have been first reported).
Then I’ve been told of KStars / Ekos : Absolutely no comparison in the ease of use.
For instance : compare the simulators in KStars and the simulators in TheSkyX, and you will have it all . Or the solving. Or the guiding. Or the sequencer…
And the support in KStars is always there as well as the frequency of the updates.
With INDI / KStars / Ekos I can live my astronomy using my Mac along with numerous apps like SkySafari, PHD2, FireCapture, AstroLive etc…
Because my programming competence belongs to the past, my way to support this beautiful project is a donation.
Thanks again to all the developers of KStars.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Oleg, Sébastien, Alfred, Derek, Ollie, Rob Lancaster, Eric, Teseo, Jim and 5 other people also said thanks.
5 years 10 months ago #26181

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This is a great place to thank us ;-). Many folks put a lot of effort into KStars and INDI over the years, most especially Jasem Mutlaq, but a lot of others as well.. Two years ago, I was just as frustrated as you were because Equinox Image, which worked very well for my SBIG camera, stopped being produced and supported on OS X. I wasn't willing to spend that much money on the Sky X Fortunately also around that time, I stumbled across INDI, which was available on both OS X and Linux, and I was shocked to determine had all the potential of ASCOM on windows, and then some. Then I shortly thereafter found KStars which at that time was a Linux only program and I saw that it had a huge amount of potential. So at first I started using it on Linux in a virtual machine and then later on a raspberry pi. I was much happier using KStars in a virtual or remote environment than the Sky X natively. I provided a bunch of feedback to the developers as I was learning to use it and make it better. But then decided to try to build it on OS X. When I finally managed to get it to build, I found that a lot of work was needed to fix things so they would work well on OS X. But I thought it would be worth it to try to fix all those little issues.. That is when I really got involved. . . Interestingly enough it was largely with the help of discussions we had in these forums, but over the course of a year or so, three of us ported KStars to work on OS X. I've been really happy with the results, but it was a lot of work.

But that does pale in comparison to what Jasem has done. He built Ekos, the astrophotography suite in KStars from the ground up. And he has headed up both the KStars and INDI projects for a number of years since then. I could not have ported KStars to OS X without his help.

Thanks

Rob
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Sébastien, Alfred, Ollie, Jim, Jean-Claude JESIOR, Jerry Black, Paul Muller
5 years 10 months ago #26187

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