From BlenderWiki
Installing the Binaries
Blender is available both as a binary executable and as source code on the Foundation site (blender.org). At the main page click on the “Downloads” section.
For the online manual hosted at the wiki, you can generally use the most recent version of Blender located at the Blender Foundation website (although all of the features from the newest release version may not be fully updated). If you are using a published version of this manual it is recommended that you use the Blender version included on the Guide CD-ROM. In the following text, whenever “download” is mentioned, those using the book should instead retrieve Blender from the CD-ROM.
Downloading and installing the binary distribution
The binary distributions are provided for primary operating system families. Some unofficial distributions may exist for other operating systems, but these are not supported by the Blender Foundation and you should consult the maintainers directly for support issues:
- Windows
- GNU/Linux
- MacOSX
- FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris
- MorphOS (not supported by Blender Foundation)
Since Blender uses OpenGL for all drawing operations (including menus and buttons), you will need a proper and compliant OpenGL installation on your system. Generally speaking, integrated graphics chips and older low end graphics cards provide poor OpenGL support which results in reduced performance. It is often possible to work around the poor OpenGL support of such cards by using software-based OpenGL solutions e.g. by turning hardware acceleration down or off on Windows, or using software MESA 3D on GNU/Linux. Running Blender using the blender-softwaregl script may help in this case.
Rendering is done by the Blender rendering engine in core memory and by the main CPU of your machine, so an unsupported graphics card will not have an impact if you use the machine only for rendering (as would be the case for a rendering farm).
The installer will create files and several folders in two locations on your computer: one set of folders contains the Blender program, and the other is a set of folders for user data. You must have administrator authorization to create these. The folders are:
.blender– Configuration information (mostly prompts in your native language).blendcache_.B– Temporary space for physics simulation information (softbodies, cloth, fluids, particles…).plugins– Added functionality for textures and sequencing.scripts– Python scripts that extend Blender functionality.tmp– Temporary output, intermediate renders…
Hardware Support
Blender supports 64-bit hardware platforms running a 64-bit operating system which removes the 2GB addressable memory limit issue of 32-bit operating systems.
Blender supports multi-CPU/core chips, like the Intel Core i7 and AMD Phenom X6 chips, by providing a Threads setting when rendering, to work all cores in parallel when rendering an image (you can also activate the “auto” button to always automatically use as much threads as logical CPUs available…).
Blender supports a wide variety of pen-based tablets on all major operating systems including: OS X, Windows XP and above, and GNU/Linux.
Information on how to shorten render times can be found here.
Developers’ platforms
This is the list of systems in use and supported by active Blender developers:
| Name | OS | CPU | Graphics card |
| Andrea Weikert | Windows XP 32 | AMD Athlon 64 X2 | Nvidia Quadro FX1500 |
| Andrea Weikert | Windows XP 32 | Intel P4 | ATI Radeon 9000 |
| Antony Riakiotakis | Windows 7 64 | Intel Core i5 | NVidia Geforce GT 540M |
| Antony Riakiotakis | Ubuntu 12.10 | Intel Core i5 | NVidia Geforce GT 540M |
| Bastien Montagne | Debian Testing 64 | Intel Core i7 Q720 | ATI Radeon 5730 mobility |
| Benoit Bolsee | Windows XP 32 | AMD Athlon XP | ATI Radeon 9200 |
| Brecht van Lommel | Windows 7 64 | Intel Core 2 Duo | NVidia GeForce 460 GTX |
| Daniel Genrich | Windows Vista 64 | Intel Core 2 Duo | NVidia GeForce 8500 GT |
| Joshua Leung | Windows Vista 32 | Intel Core2 Duo | Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 |
| Nathan Letwory | Windows 7 Ultimate 64 | AMD Turion X2 Mobile RM-74 | ATI HD 4650 |
| Nathan Letwory | Windows 7 Ultimate 64 | AMD Athlon II X4 620 | 2x HIS ATI HD 5550 /w four monitors |
| Robin Allen | Windows XP 32 | Intel Centrino duo | NVidia GeForce go 7600 |
| Thomas Dinges | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core i5 | Intel HD 2500 |
| Thomas Dinges | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core i7 | NVidia GeForce 540M + Intel HD 3000 |
| Andrea Weikert | Linux 32 | AMD Athlon 64 X2 | Nvidia Quadro FX1500 |
| Brecht van Lommel | Linux 64 | Intel Core 2 Duo | NVidia GeForce 460 GTX |
| Campbell Barton | Linux 64 | AMD Phenom II X6 | Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 |
| Diego Borghetti | Linux 64 | Intel Core i5 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 |
| Diego Borghetti | Linux 64 | Intel Core i7 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M |
| Ken Hughes | Linux 32 | Intel Core Duo | Nvidia GeForce GO 7500 |
| Ken Hughes | Linux 64 | AMD Athlon 64 X2 | Nvidia GeForce 6600 |
| Kent Mein | Linux 64 | Intel Core Duo | Nvidia Quadro FX 1400 |
| Michael Fox | Linux 32 | Celeron | Nividia GeForce 6200 |
| Raul Fernandez Hernandez | Linux 32 | Pentium D 945 | ATI X1550 |
| Robin Allen | Linux 32 | Intel Centrino duo | NVidia GeForce go 7600 |
| Brecht van Lommel | OS X 10.6 | Intel Core 2 Duo | NVidia GeForce 9600M GT |
| Dustin Martin | OSX 10.5 | Dual Quad Intel | Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT |
| Ton Roosendaal | OSX 10.7 | iMac Intel Core i7 | AMD Radeon HD 6970M |
| Ton Roosendaal | OSX 10.8 | MacBook Pro i7 "Retina" | NVidia GT 650M + Intel HD 4000 |
| Matt Ebb | OSX 10.5 | Dual Core Intel MBP | nVidia 8600M |
| Kent Mein | SunOS 5.8 | Sun Blade 150 | ATI PGX |
| Timothy Baldridge | SGI Irix 6.5 (mipspro) | 8 x R16000 | (headless) |
| Timothy Baldridge | SGI Irix 6.5 (mipspro) | 2 x R10000 | |
| Jeroen Bakker | Latest Ubuntu 64bit | Dell m4300 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz | Nvidia Quadro FX360M |
| Sergey Sharybin | Debian Wheezy 64bit | Intel Core i7 920 2.6Ghz | Nvidia GeForce GTX 560Ti + GeForce GT 620 |
| Sergey Sharybin | Debian Wheezy 64bit | Intel Core i5 2.4GHz | Intel Sandy Bridge + Nvidia GT 520M |
| Jens Verwiebe | OSX 10.6/7/8 | Intel Xeon 6-core@ 3.33 | ATI 5870 |
| Nicholas Bishop | Fedora 18 64bit | Intel Core i7 @ 2.93GHz | AMD Radeon HD 6950 (Gallium drivers, currently at OpenGL 2.1) |
| Nicholas Bishop | Ubuntu 12.10 64bit | Intel Core i5 | ATI Mobility Radeon 5650 (Gallium drivers) |
| Tamito Kajiyama | Windows Vista 64bit | Intel Core2 Duo | Nvidia Quadro FX 770M |
| Sergej Reich | Arch Linux 64bit | Intel Core2 Quad @ 2.83GHz | Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 |
| Sergej Reich | Arch Linux 64bit | Intel Core i3 @ 2.10GHz | Intel Sandybridge Mobile |
| Howard Trickey | Ubuntu 12.04 64 | Intel Xeon E5-1650 | NVidia Quadro 600 |
| Howard Trickey | Windows 7 64 | Intel Core i7 | NVidia GeForce GTX 460 |
| Howard Trickey | OSX 10.8.2 | Intel Core Duo | NVidia GeForce 9400M |
Compiling the Source
There are presently four build systems for making a binary for the different operating systems supported. For more information about compiling a custom installation binary for your machine, please see the Building Blender wiki page.
Compiling the Plugins
Plugins are dynamically loaded routines that augment functionality in either texture generation or sequencing (image manipulation). See this forum thread for more information.
