BGBlitz is a multi-platform software. It should run on every platform, delivering a complete Java 1.4.2 (or better) environment. The tested environments are:

  • Win 98, Win ME, Win NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista
  • Macintosh OS X 10.3 or newer
  • Linux 2.2 or newer
  • FreeBSD 5.5 or newer
  • Macintosh 9.2 or newer (probably from 8.5) (only BGBlitz up to 1.9.0)

A Pentium/200, K6/200 or a PowerPC/200 should be sufficient. If the 2 ply evaluation isn't used, a Pentium/100 or a PowerPC/100 will probably do fine.

About 64 MB free memory and up to 30 MB on the disk are needed.
Naturally a faster CPU and more RAM never hurts (especially for 3 ply evaluation) ;-)

A resolution of 1024x768 or higher is recommended.

Before the installation of BGBlitz, you need a Java virtual machine. Following Java versions are recommended:

Windows: Sun JRE 1.5.0 or Sun Java 6 are recommended. It seems that on some PCs Java 1.4.x has problems (see Known Problems), so I recommend only 1.5.0 or Java 6. The best performance is achieved with the download of the BGBlitz version that has a special adopted Java 6 version included.

Macintosh: For Mac OS X, Java is already included.
Mac OS 9 supports only Java 1.1 and BGBlitz 1.9.0 is the last version that supports OS 9. The Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.2 or newer is recommended.

Linux: Use Sun JRE 1.4.2. Java 1.5 has a sometimes problems with big Themes, Java 6 should work fine.

FreeBSD: use Java 1.5 of the FreeBSD Foundation. Tested with PC-BSD and DesktopBSD.

John Wiltshire tested it on FreeBSD 5.1 and on NetBSD 1.6.1 successfully. I have tested it on NetBSD 2.0.1 in the Linux-Emulation succesfully but it runs only on the single CPU kernel. Gary McGill tested BGBlitz on OpenServer 5.0.6 where it runs well if the sound is disabled.

Other Operating Systems: Earlier version were reported to run on IBM OS/2, Sun Solaris (Sparc), Compaq Digital UNIX and IBM AIX. Unzip the Linux-version and try to adjust bgblitz.sh or bgblitz.cmd. I will try my best to get it up and running for any platform you might have. If you get BGBlitz running on such a system, please send me an email, with a screen shot if possible. The requirements are probably similar to the above systems.

BGBlitz was tested on eCS (a modern OS/2 version). Please use the Linux version. Thanks to Roger Troost, who tried this out.

If you don't have already a Java-version on your PC, you should be able to find them following the above links.