Blender runs pretty well in a cygwin x-windows shell (so far anyway). Getting Blender to actually work on my generic Centos 5 install was excruciating.
To find out what is missing from a system that will prevent an application from running use ldd as in the following example for the blender executable
[root@styx blender-2.45-linux-glibc236-py24-i386]# ldd blender | grep “not found”
libopenal.so.0 => not found
libalut.so.0 => not found
libSDL-1.2.so.0 => not found
Then to install packages:
[root@styx blender-2.45-linux-glibc236-py24-i386]# yum install libSDL-1.2.so.0
Loading “installonlyn” plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
–> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
—> Downloading header for SDL to pack into transaction set.
SDL-1.2.10-8.el5.i386.rpm 100% |=========================| 12 kB 00:00
—> Package SDL.i386 0:1.2.10-8.el5 set to be updated
–> Running transaction check
Dependencies Resolved
=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
SDL i386 1.2.10-8.el5 base 233 k
Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)
Total download size: 233 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/1): SDL-1.2.10-8.el5.i 100% |=========================| 233 kB 00:00
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: SDL ######################### [1/1]
Installed: SDL.i386 0:1.2.10-8.el5
Complete!
Getting Blender working
The above mentioned package via, yum install libSDL-1.2.so.0
rpm -i /mnt/dante/everyone/openal-0.0.8-1.i586.rpm
rpm -i /mnt/dante/everyone/libalut-1.1.0-alt1.2.i586.rpm