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 of disk space 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. The 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 which 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 problem sometimes 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. Reed Christiansen tested it successfully on OpenBSD 4.4 with Java 1.7. I have tested it on NetBSD 2.0.1 in the Linux-Emulation successfully 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. It runs on OpenSolaris naturally too.

Other Operating Systems: Earlier versions 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.