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I have a few Linux servers that I can use to do acoustic analysis and I'd like to see if I could run PAMGuard on them.

From the PAMGuard website, it says:

Many hardware interfaces do not provide Mac or Linux drivers, so we are currently unable to support PAMGuard on non Windows platforms.

However, it also says:

You can extract the PAMGuard jar file from a Windows installation and attempt to run it on other computers, but it definitely won't have access to external hardware and it's quite likely that some of the graphics functionality won't work. We are hoping to provide a Mac installer for offline use in the future. Some users have installed Windows on their Macs with Boot Camp, and successfully run PAMGuard that way.

I only plan do use PAMGuard for data post processing (no data acquisition), so it looks like it could potentially work.

Has anyone been successful at running PAMGuard on a Linux machine ?

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    $\begingroup$ As a comment as I havent tried PAMGuard. I have run a few scientific windows-only apps on linux (mint for me) using "wine" (winehq.org) and/or "playonlinux (playonlinux.com/en) with good results, usually there are small UI issues, but software runs and can access USB ports as normal (for data load and licence keys). $\endgroup$
    – Rasmus
    Commented Aug 30, 2022 at 7:28
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    $\begingroup$ Good to know, thanks @Rasmus $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 30, 2022 at 12:29

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The short answer is "Yes".

The slightly longer answer is "Yes, if you know what you're doing on Linux".

I've run PAMGuard on Linux platforms both from command line, using a jar file from a Windows installation, and running from the Eclipse build environment. Command line has worked on both x86 desktops and on ARM processors (e.g. Raspberry Pi) though you may have to build your own jre to get it to run on these platforms.

The comment on the website holds - there won't be any hardware interfaces beyond standard sound cards which PAMGuard does handle on Linux, but for offline processing it should be fine.

The main PAMGuard jar file will have been built for Java 11, though we generally make releases with the latest jre (18 unless it changed again recently). You should therefore be OK running it with jre 11 or higher.

However, the PAMGuard team (which is effectively me at the moment) is not a Linux expert and can't offer any support.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks Doug, this is very helpful. Where could I find the jar file for Java 11? $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 13:32
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    $\begingroup$ The standard windows installation jar file is compatible with JRE 11 $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 18:07

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