>We also occasionally make an independent release. These independent releases will be available as a gzipped tar archive from the following website: <ulink url="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kstars/"
>&kstars; is been packaged by many Linux/BSD distributions, including Redhat, Suse, and Mandrake. Some distributions package &kstars; as a separate application, some just provide a tdeedu package, which includes &kstars;. </para
>On my system, &kstars; uses about 60 MB of system memory with the default settings. Most of this usage is due to the loaded object databases. You can dramatically reduce the memory footprint by reducing the faint limit for stars in the Configuration Window, or eliminating catalogs of objects (NGC, IC, comets, asteroids, &etc;). If &kstars; is idling, it uses very little <acronym
>CPU</acronym
>; but it will use as much as you have got when panning or zooming. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="compilation">
<title
>Compilation and Installation</title>
<para
>In order to compile and install &kstars; on your system, type the following in the base folder of the unpacked &kstars; distribution: <screen width="40"
> variable is not set, set prefix to whatever folder &kde; is installed in: this is usually either <filename class="directory"
>/usr</filename
>, <filename class="directory"
>/opt/kde</filename
>, or <filename class="directory"
>/opt/kde3</filename
>. Also, make sure you do the last step as <systemitem class="username"
>root</systemitem
>. </para
><para
>&kstars; uses <command
>autoconf</command
> and <command
>automake</command
>, so you should not have trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the &kstars; mailing list <email
>kstars-devel@kde.org</email
>. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="configuration">
<title
>Configuration</title>
<para
>At this point, there are no special configuration options or requirements. If &kstars; complains that there are missing data files, become <systemitem class="username"
>root</systemitem
> and manually copy all files in <filename class="directory"