### Operation system

`polymake` can be used on UNIX systems only. It has been successfully tested on Linux, Sun Solaris, MacOS X, IBM AIX and Tru64 Unix. Other UNIX variants might do, too, provided all necessary tools listed below are properly installed.

`polymake` does not run on any Windows system natively. If you really need it, you are welcome to try it in a Unix emulation environment, such as Cygwin.

### C++ compiler

On the most UNIX systems, polymake can be compiled only with GNU `gcc`. Any newer version of `gcc` 3, starting with 3.3, will do. We recommend `gcc` 3.4.x (as per August 2004) as it is superior to all older versions in efficiency of the produced code, as well as regarding the compilation time and memory consumption.

If you are working with Linux on an Intel-based PC, you can also take the Intel C++ compiler. It is free for non-commercial use. Version 7.1 or newer will work. Don't get worried about numerous messages appearing during the compilation; they are all harmless.

Regarding other commercial compilers, those from Sun (Forte) and IBM are still not close enough to the ANSI C++ standard, dont't even bother trying them.

The Comeau C++ compiler is also a good choice. It is not for free, but rather inexpensive. Be sure to use the recent version >= 4.3.3. From our experience we can tell it's the most economic compiler in respect to the machine resources, but the produced code is sligthly slower than that by `gcc`. Another drawback is that the debugging with gdb is almost impossible.

### perl

Significant parts of polymake are written in Perl; you will need it already in the configuration step. The most modern UNIX distributions contain perl out of the box, so this requirement should make you the least trouble. Every stable perl version from 5.6.1 upwards will do.

### make

The installation procedures rely heavily on the advanced features of GNU make utility; any other `make` will fail.

You will need the version 3.79 or newer. It is ported on almost every UNIX platform, and the installation is quite simple and straightforward. Moreover, each Linux system configured for "Software Development" contains it out of the box. Be aware that on some other UNIX systems the GNU make is available as gmake.

### Hardware

To compile polymake from the source code, you will need a rather powerful machine with at least 300 MB RAM (for `gcc` 3.3 or `icc` even more). The C++ compilers are extraordinarily RAM-thirsty while compiling deeply nested templates, and `polymake` has a lot of.

Resources required to run `polymake` itself are moderate. It scales naturally with the complexity of your problems.