Linux for astronomy
 

What distribution of Linux would be the choice for astronomers running the planetarium program "Cartes Du Ciel"? Any ideas?

I'd assume that any distribution you can get it to run on would be "the choice". Checking the homepage, it offers deb and rpm packages, as well as source files. It even offers its own debian/ubuntu package source.

http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/docu...n_linux_debian

I know two distribution for astronomers Piernix (http://cosmo.torun.pl/foswiki/bin/view/Cosmo/PierNix) and AstroKnopix (http://astroknoppix.pkim.org/) but they are rather out of date (and probably won't be developed in futher) so the better idea is choose any distro which you like and install on it some astronomical software. I don't know which part of astronomy is interesting for you.

You should look at Scientific Linux.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...ion=scientific

It is distributed by CERN and aims at bringing together members of the scientific community (so not only astronomy). It is probably your best choice, but any distribution would work; you could then select the astronomy software you would like to install, y compris les Cartes du Ciel :)

If you're not aware of them, both Celestia and Stellarium are also good astronomy programs for Linux. Both will run on just about any distro.