KNIME is supported by various operating systems on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 Intel-architecture-based platforms. These operating systems are: Windows (from XP to Windows 8 at the time of writing this book) and Linux (most modern Linux operating systems work well with KNIME, Mac OS X (10.6 and above); you can check the list of supported platforms for details at: http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/development/readme_eclipse_3.7.1.html. It also supports Java 7 on Windows and Linux, so extensions requiring Java 7 can be used too. Unfortunately under Mac OS X, there were some problems with Java 7. So on Mac OS X, the recommended version is Java 6.
There are two ways to install KNIME: an easier way is to unpack the archive you can download from their site, and a bit more complicated way is to install KNIME to an existing Eclipse installation as a plugin. Both have use cases, but the general recommendation is to install it from an archive.
We assume you are using the open source version of KNIME, which can be downloaded from the following address (always download the latest version):
http://www.knime.org/knime-desktop-sdk-download
It is not necessary to subscribe to the newsletters, but if you have not done it yet, it might be worth doing it. Some of the newsletters also contain tips for KNIME usage. This is quite infrequent, usually one per month.
The supported operating system versions are 32-bit and 64-bit for Linux and Windows, and 64-bit for Mac OS X.
KNIME is available in an executable file for Windows (in a 7-zip compressed format). You can execute it as a regular user (unless your network administrator blacklists running executable files that are downloaded from the Internet); just double-click on it and in the window that appears, select the destination folder.
You do not have to specify the folder name (such as knime), as a folder with the name knime_KNIME version (in our case knime_2.8.0) will be created at the destination address, and it will contain the whole installation. You can have multiple versions installed.
You can start KNIME GUI with the knime.exe executable file from that folder. You can create a shortcut of it on your desktop using the right-click menu by navigating to Send to | Desktop (create shortcut). On its first start, KNIME might ask for permissions to connect to the Internet. This may require administrator rights, but it is usually a good idea to change the firewall settings to let KNIME through.
This file is just a simple tar.gz archive. You can unzip it using a command similar to the one shown as follows:
$ tar –xvzf knime_2.8.0.linux.gtk.x86_64.tar.gz –C /path/to/extract
Alternatively, you can use your favorite archive-handling tool to achieve similar results. The executable you need is named knime. Your window manager's manual might help you create application launchers for this executable if you prefer to have one.
If you have problems installing KNIME, maybe others also had similar problems; please check the FAQ page of KNIME at http://tech.knime.org/faq first. If it does not solve your problem, you should search the forum at http://tech.knime.org/forum; if even that fails to help, ask the experts there.