Installing Canopy

Enthought Canopy is a complete Python environment, basically a one-stop-shop for everything we will need in this course. It is commercial software, but free licenses are available for academic use.
WHAT YOU NEED:
- a computer running Mac OSX 10.6.2-10.8, Windows XP/Vista/7, or Linux RH5 or above. If your computer is running a different platform, contact me and we’ll see what we can do.
- your @albany.edu email address.

STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Visit https://www.enthought.com/products/canopy/
  2. (Have fun reading all about Canopy)
  3. Click on the “Academic License” tab
  4. Click on the green box “Request your Academic License”
  5. You will see page asking you to sign in to your Enthought account. You probably don’t have one yet.
  6. Instead, click on the “Sign up” button.
  7. Fill out the form with your name, email address, and a password of your choice.
  8. IMPORTANT: You must use your @albany.edu address to get your free academic license.
  9. Check your email; wait for the confirmation message.
  10. Click on the link in the email. A new web page will open up saying “Activation successful”.
  11. Click on the button saying “Complete your academic license request”.
  12. Sign in using your email and new password.
  13. You should get a message saying “Congratulations! You have been granted an Academic license, valid for one year.”
  14. Click on the link to access the Canopy installers.
  15. Then on the install page, choose a platform (Windows, Linux, Mac).
  16. You *may* have to choose between 32-bit and 64-bit versions, depending on your system. It’s recommended that you choose 64-bit.
  17. Choose to install “Canopy Full”
  18. The software will now download and you will follow the usual installation process on your computer.
  19. Try to launch Canopy. *Mac users, see below*
  20. The first time you launch Canopy, it will set up your Python environment. You will see a prompt asking you to select the default install location. Select “Continue”. (Experts: you can install Python at a different location at this step).
  21. Click “Start using Canopy” at the next prompt. (Experts: this will set Canopy as the default Python environment. You can also click No here if you are already using another Python environment.)
  22. The Canopy app opens up with a window saying “Hi, welcome to Canopy!” and inviting you to log in to your Enthought account.
  23. Click on the log in, put in the same email address and password you selected above
  24. The window should now say “Logged in as [your email]@albany.edu”.
  25. You are ready to go with Python! Open up the editor and start calculating! (Try just typing 2 + 2 at the prompt and hit enter).

* Mac users: you *may* get an error message the first time you try to open Canopy: “Canopy” can’t be opened because it it from an unidentified developer.”
If this happens, right-click or control-click on the Canopy icon and then select “open”. A dialog box opens up saying “ “Canopy” is from an unidentified developer. Are you sure you want to open it?”. Click “open”.


If you’re already a Python user:
There are many ways to install and use Python. If you prefer not to use Canopy, that’s completely fine. For this class you will need some standard packages for scientific computing including numpy and matplotlib.