Installing arduino software on Mandrake10.0 or Ubuntu 5.1

[prasadm]

Hi,
I have two small, low speed, low memory machines which I want to use for arduino development. I have installed Mandrake 10.0 and Ubuntu 5.1 on these machines successfully. When I try to install a version (arduino16 to 18 or 22) of arduino software on any of these, java errors are displayed.
Is it possible to use these machines with these linux versions for arduino development?
Which java version should I install on these machines ?
Also guide me if anything else also is needed for the purpose.
Thanks in advance.
--prasad mehendale

[rbtying]

Those machines should be fine - if you're willing to sacrifice the Arduino IDE, just about any computer would work as well.  The OpenJDK works well for me, and there have been some problems (on this forum) with the Sun Java binaries.  If you're using the Sun binaries, try using update-alternatives to switch to the OpenJDK.

Unless you've got a good reason not to, you should probably update the install to a recent distribution - unlike Windows, linux updates rarely require more resources as compared to older versions.  Ubuntu 11.04 is nice (Unity notwithstanding), and it has Arduino prepackaged - that would do the setup for you, and should fix the java errors.

[prasadm]

> if you're willing to sacrifice the Arduino IDE, just about any computer would work as well.

Can you please elaborate on this ?
I have read that I can develop on Arduino even without java. Is it true?
Please give me a pointer how to implement it. I use editors like Emacs, Vi in linux.
Thanks.
--pm

[rbtying]

The Arduino system is really just an editor (for ex. vim), a set of libraries (download from the website), a compiler (avr-gcc), and a programmer (avrdude).  If you're already experienced in how to work with commandline C/C++ development tools, you should be fine.  Search around here for the CMake version, which should be compatible, with some slight modification, for your purposes.  Alternatively, you can write your own makefile. 

So yes, you can develop on Arduino without java.  Look into AVR development in Linux - the only thing you'll have to change is uploading (avrdude -carduino) and linking in the Arduino libraries (compiler + link).

[hcl2]

I have mandrake 10 running both 0018 and 0022.  You probably have the distro supplied java which will not work with any Java (tm) program.  I have no clue why distros allow these VMs to make it into their repos.

rpm -qf `which java`

If it says anything about iced tea, remove it with

sudo urpme java  (probably need the full package name which comes from the previous command)

Then download java directly from sun's/oracle's website and install the package that it gives you.  Your JDK will end up in /usr/java/{something}.  You can symlink with any version to a "default" with

ln -s /usr/java/{something} /usr/java/default

Then set your environment varaibles before starting arduino with

JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default ./arduino