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If I remember correctly, Stan is using Visual Basic to produce this software. The final release of VB was in 1998 with decreasing support in later years. This environment does not exist for other operating systems, so a direct "port" in the traditional sense is not possible. And unfortunately, the development tools themselves are effectively obsolete.

Of course the underlying algorithms and calculating engines can easily be ported. It's not complicated. If Stan is interested, I would suggest that I/you/we help him port to Java or, better yet, Javascript (for the non-computer folks, you may be interested to know that these two software technologies are completely unrelated --strange but true). Either of these can easily be used to generate multi-platform functioning software and not just limited to the (dying) stand-alone desktop platforms (see "node webkit" e.g.) but also iPhone/iPad, Android, and pure web. There are some disadvantages but they are largely irrelevant for calculation software like this.

You can also certainly run Stan's "Celestial Tools" on Ubuntu using "wine" (Windows emulator). "Celestial Tools" is a very simple application in terms of Windows system resources, graphics and all that, and that's no disrespect to the complex and interesting calculations inside. This isn't some video game that will stretch the limits of your system. Using "wine" is the quick option.

-FER

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