Rapid Photo Downloader depends on the following software:

- GNOME 2.18 or higher
- GTK+ 2.10 or higher
- Python 2.5 or 2.6
- pygtk 2.12 or higher
- python-gconf 2.18 or higher
- python-glade2 2.12 or higher
- gnome-python 2.12 or higher
- libexiv2 0.15 or higher
- pyexiv2 0.1.1 or higher

To run Rapid Photo Downloader you will need all the software mentioned above.

If you want to see dropshadows around thumbnail images, install python-imaging.
This is optional but recommended.

A strongly recommended package is exiv2 (not just the library libexiv2), so
Rapid Photo Downloader can determine if it can download additional types of RAW
files (some early versions of exiv2 and pyexiv2 segfault on certain RAW file
types).

If you want to download videos, you can install:

- python-hachoir-metadata
- python-kaa-metadata
- ffmpegthumbnailer

hachoir metadata is required to download videos. kaa metadata is used to
extract additional metadata from videos. ffmpegthumbnailer is used only to 
display thumbnail images as the download occurs. This is a useful feature, and
if you can install it, it is recommended.

hachoir metadata, kaa metadata and ffmpegthumbnailer are optional. The program 
will run without them.

To start from a fairly basic system, I suggest the following:

1. Install the required gnome packages from your Linux distribution's package 
   repositories.  On a recent Linux distribution, expect all to be available for
   easy download and installation.  If you already use gnome, most of the 
   packages will already be installed.  Do confirm that python-gconf, 
   python-glade2, and gnome-python are installed, because they
   may not be quite so common in a base system.
    
2. Install pyexiv2.  You can probably do that using your distributions's package 
   repositories (look for python-pyexiv2). But if not, there are instructions 
   here: 
   
   http://tilloy.net/dev/pyexiv2/download.html
   
3. Install this application from the tarball. You probably need to be the 
   super user (root) to be able to do this:

   sudo python setup.py install

   If you get an error saying 'Error while running msgfmt', you will need to
   install the gettext package on your system, which contains the msgfmt 
   program.