Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Installing and running QGIS
If you haven't already installed QGIS, click on the
Download Now
button on the main
QGIS web page to download the QGIS software. What you do next depends on which op-
erating system you are running on your computer:
• For MS Windows, you can download a double-clickable installer that installs
QGIS and all the required libraries in one go. Make sure you use the OSGeo4W in-
staller, which includes the Python interpreter, QGIS itself, and all the required lib-
raries.
• For Mac OS X, you'll need to visit the Kyngchaos website (
ht-
tp://www.kyngchaos.com/software/qgis
)
to download and install the GDAL and
matplotlib libraries before installing a version of QGIS specially built for your op-
erating system. All the required packages are available from the Kyngchaos site.
• For Unix-like systems, you'll use a package manager to download, compile, and in-
stall QGIS and the required libraries from an appropriate package repository. More
information about installing on a Unix-like system can be found at
http://qgis.org/
Once you have installed the QGIS system, you can run it just like any other application on
your computer, for example, by double-clicking on the QGIS icon in your
Applica-
tions
folder.
If everything goes well, the QGIS application will start up and you will be greeted with the
following window:
