How I installed Processing on my Linux Acer Aspire One

October 26th, 2008 · 14 Comments ·

Here is how I installed Processing on my Linux Acer Aspire One. It took a little bit of time and I learned something also in the process. BTW, I can’t imagine a less convenient name (processing) to look for in the Internet : ANYTHING related to computers has to do with processing ! LOL

The steps :

I Downloaded processing-0148.tgz from processing.org. The file will go to the ‘Downloads’ directory.
Then I unpacked Processing-0148.tgz to the directory Processing-0148 inside the ‘Downloads’ directory.

Went to Java Sun website and downloaded Java SDK for Linux (jdk-6u10-linux-i586.bin).
Followed the install instruction from Sun specifically for the self-extracting bin :

cd /usr/share
sudo su
./home/user/Downloads/jdk-6u10-linux-i586.bin
That is : changed directory to where I wanted to JDKto be installed into, became root and executed the bin to install the JDK. Answered yes when required to agree to the terms of license.
A few moments more and JDK was installed.

Than moved Processing directory to /usr/share :
mv /home/user/Downloads/processing-0148 /usr/share/

Now the trick suggested by Fry and Reas necessary to make processing use the JDK and not the IcedTea Java which won’t work for processing and that is supplied with the Aspire One :

cd /usr/share/processing-0148
mv java java.bak
ln -s /usr/share/jdk1.6.0_10 java

The latter two steps backup the original java directory of processing and create a crosslink to the installed JDK.

To execute processing:

cd /usr/share/processing-0148/

./processing

That’s it.

Tags: Processing

14 responses so far ↓

  • Christian Nold // Nov 8, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Brilliant. Thanks for the tutorial.
    I manged to get Processing running on my acer as well!

    Did you find a way to add an icon onto the desktop?

    C

  • Christian Nold // Nov 8, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    One other suggestion.
    I am very new to linux but I would suggest adding
    sudo when you move the processing directory

    sudo mv /home/user/Downloads/processing-0148 /usr/share

    I found that when I didn’t add sudo, rather than move, the directory was symbolically linked to /usr/share/

    so when I deleted the processing directory from Downloads it also removed it from /usr/share/

    - hope that helps

    best
    C

  • admin // Nov 8, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    Ciao Christian I think ’sudo su’ should keep the su status so specifying sudo again is no longer necessary.
    I suspect you did not type sudo su’ or exit-ed su or did the mv from a different terminal window. Of course I may be wrong, I very new to Linux – and I enjoy it.
    Oh, for the icons i dunno but it is one of the things I’d like to learn
    Best.
    Alex

  • Christian Nold // Nov 8, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Hi Alex,
    Yes I think you must be right about the mv :)

    One other thing. Do you find that you have to be the super user in order to run Processing? I get errors when I try to run it just as a user. I suspect its the symbolic link to the java library.

    best
    Christian

  • admin // Nov 8, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    I just tried in a clean (no su) terminal window to make sure :
    [user@localhost ~]$ cd /usr/share/
    [user@localhost share]$ cd processing-0148/
    [user@localhost processing-0148]$ ./processing

    and processing starts….
    Ciao
    Alex

  • Christian Nold // Nov 13, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    all fine now somehow :)

    any luck with Arduino?

  • admin // Nov 14, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    No, haven’t tried yet. But of course in my to-do list.
    Ciao
    Alex

  • Chris W // Dec 29, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    Did you get anywhere with Arduino on the AA1?

  • admin // Dec 31, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    Ciao Chris,
    No, I haven’t tried yet. I currently after something different.
    A.

  • chris w // Jan 5, 2009 at 11:55 pm

    I managed to install arduino onto my AA1, eventually – basically I followed the standard fedora install sequence.

    However, I found that once I rebooted after adding the default user to group UUCP and lock (needed to get access to the usb port) that the AA1 failed to finish its startup into X.

    I booted off a usb distro and edited /etc/groups back to its previous state, but after that it still wouldnt boot.

    In the end I installed ubuntu 8.04 – the UNR netbook remix instead.

    Arduino and processing dropped on fine following the default ubuntu install info.

    My advice – use the force, but go over to the dark (brown!) side… load up ubuntu! –

    http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR

    ttfn – chris w.

  • admin // Jan 6, 2009 at 9:38 am

    @chris w, thank you for you notes.
    I love the dark side .
    Yes, I’m probably getting rid of Linpus one day.
    Alex

  • chris w // Jan 10, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    … And the ultimate answer – is yes, you can get it running under Linpus too – http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1230895424/0 <— scroll down quite a way to reply posted by corone.

    The key bit is that Linpus is missing the the FTDI kernel module.

  • admin // Jan 11, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    @chris w, thank you for your note. You are writing a good part of this tutorial ! Alex

  • Thomas // Nov 3, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    Thanks. Although I stumbled on this and don’t intend to use it, I am heartened by your generosity and diligence in sharing it.

Leave a Comment

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree

← →