Requirements
==============================================

Hardware
--------------------

A computer. If it can run a decent operating system it is probably enough to run PiAnoS. 

If you really need figures:
	
	- 1 GHz CPU
	- 5 Gb of disk space
	- 1 Gb of RAM
	
.. note:: Although an iPhone responds to these hardware specs, there is a gotcha: the computer needs to run a `decent` OS, a category in which iOS does not fall into. Windows XP and higer, Debian Linux 5 and higher do (as well as many, many others).

For the record, this is the configuration of our current (2013.05.08) production server running 3 instances, serving tens of students and examiners for teaching and experiments:

	- 2 vCPUs @ 2 Ghz
	- a 128 Gb disk
	- 4 Gb of RAM
	- Running Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.7
	
And it's `much` more than enough.
	

Software
-----------------------

PiAnoS is built using a `Apache <http://www.apache.org/>`_ + `PHP <http://www.php.net>`_ + `PostgreSQL <http://www.postgresql.org>`_ stack, requiring the following versions (or more honestly, tested only on)
  - PostgreSQL 8.4
  - PHP 5.2, 5.4
  - Apache 2.2

Note that these are all free software packages - even though some exist in paid versions with nifty features, you can and should use the `FOSS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software>`_ versions available from the provided links.

Client requirements
-----------------------

Clients require a modern web browser that supports Javascript and SVG. This includes latest versions of all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Internet Explorer, Edge and Safari can do the job, but are not supported ; please test with Firefox, Chrome or Opera before complaining about a bug.

Firefox has been the historical recommended browser, and will stay for a while. But due to recent weirdness in Mozilla's strategy, this may very well change soon (Firefox is getting slower and clunkier each day, while Chrome is getting only better).

For Windows users: PiAnoS does **not** work on Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8. You need at least IE 9 or 10.
