Quick Download and Install Guide
================================

Not sure what to download? This short guide should get you started.

- Determine your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.).

- Determine your CPU type (32-bit, 64-bit or "atom" for Linux and
  Intel, or PowerPC for Mac OS X).

- Do you want a source or binary distribution? Even if you want to do
  development, a precompiled version of Sage (binary release) can be
  used for that purpose. The source distribution is mostly needed if
  you want to see the sources of the Sage packages, also known as
  SPKGs.

- If available, choose the appropriate binary version from one of the
  download mirrors. A list of mirrors is maintained at
  http://www.sagemath.org/mirrors.html

- Follow the binary installation guide
  (:ref:`sec-installation-from-binaries`) to actually
  install a pre-compiled version of Sage. The source installation
  guide
  (:ref:`sec-installation-from-binaries`)
  contains more detailed information on compiling Sage from source.


Troubleshooting
---------------

- If no binary version is available for your system, download the
  source version. Note that Sage compiles on a wide variety of
  systems, but does not compile on every system.

- If you have downloaded a binary version of Sage, upon loading Sage
  might complain about an ``illegal instruction`` error. In that case,
  a solution is available at the FAQ wiki page
  http://wiki.sagemath.org/faq#Otherquestions

- Make sure there are no spaces in the path in which you have
  installed Sage.

- Ask for help on the sage-support mailing list. This mailing list is
  also referred to as the sage-support Google group
  (http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support).
