[XXX note that this document is for the 0.3 release, so some things 
(like the binary installer for OSX) aren't done yet]

Installation Choices
--------------------

If you're on Windows or OSX, there are binary installers available. 
For other platforms, grab the source tarball or zip, unpack and run 
"python setup.py install". See the distutils documentation in the 
Python documentation for more on this.

Prerequisites
-------------

Shtoom itself has only Python 2.3 and Twisted as a pre-requisite, although 
there are many other optional added features that require additional packages.
Note that a binary installer comes with every that you need.

Optional Packages
-----------------

User interfaces - Shtoom has support for a number of different user 
interfaces. The simplest is the text interface, which requires no 
additional packages. The other user interfaces:

  Tk    -- needs the Tkinter package, which should be installed with your
           Python release. OSX users will also need to install TclTkAqua
  wx    -- needs wx and wxPython installed. 
  qt    -- needs Qt and PyQt installed. Only tested on Linux (Windows Qt 
           is not freely available)
  gnome -- requires Gnome, Gtk and PyGnome/PyGtk

Audio Drivers - On Linux with a pre 2.4 kernel, Shtoom uses the default 
Python ossaudiodev module. On other platforms, additional packages may
be needed:

  portaudio  -- needs the PortAudio library, and the fastaudio interface.
                This will work on Windows and older Linux platforms (but not
                ALSA)
  ALSA       -- needs the PyAlsaAudio package. This is the new audio 
                driver in Linux kernel 2.6, and gives better performance.
  CocoaAudio -- On OSX, you'll need to install the CocoaAudio package.


Codecs - For better bandwidth utilisation, Shtoom can use one of a number
of other codecs than the default. These require additional packages:

  gsm   --
  speex --
  g72x  --



Installation Frequently Asked Questions
---------------------------------------

Q. Do I need a compiler to install Shtoom?

Not unless you want to build one of the additional packages, and there's
not already a binary version.

Q. setup.py fails with 'ImportError: no such module distutils.core'

Debian (and other distributions derived from it, such as Knoppix and    
Ubuntu) made the stupid decision to split their python installation     
into two parts, and put an essential part of the standard library into  
the python-dev package. You'll need to install that package as well.
Feel free to log a bug report with your distribution vendor to ask
them to fix this idiocy.

Q. How do I get started?

See the user guide.

Q. How do I make free phone calls?

...