GNU/Linux

JavaFX for GNU/Linux has arrived

~ Ray Sinnema ~ 1 Comment

Finally, the time has come: JavaFX is now supported on both GNU/Linux and Solaris.

It’s not really advertised, though, so h Here’s how to get it:

  • Go to the JavaFX website.
  • Click the Download now button. Yes, the one that reads JavaFX 1.1 SDK.
  • Click the JavaFX 1.1.1 1.2 SDK option, and click Download.
  • You’ll be prompted to download javafx_sdk-1_2-linux-i586.sh. Save it somewhere convenient.
  • Make the downloaded file executable with chmod + x
  • Run the shell script with ./javafx_sdk-1_2-linux-i586.sh
  • Page through the annoying legal stuff by pressing Space repeatedly. At the end, type yes.
  • You now have a javafx-sdk1.2 directory that you can play with.

Enjoy!

Oh, and in case you have some JavaFX code from pre-1.2 versions, here’s how to migrate it.

Update: There is also a new Eclipse plugin. Binaries only, the source will have to wait until it gets transferred to eclipse.org.

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Strange things happen…

~ Ray Sinnema ~ Leave a comment

On Fridays, I work from home, to prevent wasting time commuting. So today, I started out fresh, ready to rock and roll. But alas, I was off to a slow start.

To access my company’s resources, I use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). In particular, I use the VPN client software from Cisco on Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This piece of software has the tendency to break on every kernel update, however 😦 Yes, you guessed right, this week I received a kernel update to 2.6.24-17.

When I previously upgraded Ubuntu to 8.04, I received kernel 2.6.24-16 and then the VPN client broke as well. I had to apply a patch, which didn’t work: it couldn’t apply all changes. I then manually fixed the code to make sure all the changes in the patch were applied. And then the VPN client finally worked.

So I expected another one of those sessions. But this time, googling turned up nothing. Since I’m close to a deadline, I decided to simply restart my computer and choose the 2.6.24-16 kernel from the GRUB boot menu. Since it used to work with this kernel, I expected it to work now. But no such luck. I still got an error about the Connection Manager being unable to read the connection entry.

Getting a bit desperate, I redid the VPN client installation. Now it worked 😀 Feeling lucky, I rebooted into kernel 2.6.24-17, and it still worked. Sometimes I just don’t understand computers…

Update 2008-08-15: Check out this page with Unofficial Cisco VPN Client Updates for Linux.