Monday, October 27, 2008

Xfoil for Ubuntu Intrepid

You may find out that Xfoil is not in the Ubuntu repositories. For compiling the source package, you need g77 compiler, but that is not included to Ubuntu Intrepid repositories right now and getting it to work from the source seems to be a lot of trouble. Here is what I found, after some digging, a ready made package which installed on Ubuntu Intrepid fine:

http://giuschet.altervista.org/Ubuntu/

Download the file and install with

sudo dpkg -i xfoil_6.97-1_i386.deb

If some of the dependending libraries are missing, just install those from Intrepid repository and it works fine without problems. Have fun!

For more reading about XFoil, please see:
Xfoil manual
Xfoil tutorial with illustrations
Terrabreak.org XFoil tutorial
More on Xfoil at mh-aerotools

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry but a x64 version for ubuntu exist? (ot. very beaty blog)

Unknown said...

I haven't checked the x64 repository, because I am using the 32-bit version. That is because I need to use scratchbox which only supports 32 bit CPU currently.
I used to have a 64 bit Ubuntu installed as a second OS, but it had unresolvable continuous problems with the nVidia (that not even my workmate Rodrigo Novo (worked before to Canonical) was able to fix) so I ended up giving up wrestling with it.

Icaro said...

Hi, I'm the author of the Xfoil deb package and I'm glad to see my work has been helpful.
Currently, I'm running a 32 bit system and I should do cross-compiling for building a 64 bit version.
Anyways, i posted the instructions for compiling it in the Ubuntu forum (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=994912)
and in my new blog on Wordpress (www.giuseppeschettini.tk).
g77 is in the ubuntu repositories. ifort (Intel compiler) is not.
A feedback would be really appreciated and... let me know about your airplane progress ;)

Unknown said...

Thanks for the work with the Xfoil deb package! It is very useful.