Ask Klaus!
Adding Alice
Question:
Hello, I'm a teacher who would like to familiarize my students more with Alice (Randy Pausch's visual programming language), yet I can't reliably work with it at home. Any ideas on the best way to get Alice visual programming language to work in Linux? Thank you. Don Davis
Answer:
In general, look for software specifically for your operating system. After a short search, some Debian packages showed up for Alice. If you add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file,
deb http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/alice/download/debian stable contrib
you should be able to install the (old) version 1.4 of the programming language's run-time environment with the following command:
sudo aptitude install alice-runtime
At least for Debian/Lenny (and Knoppix), this seems to work.
Under "Alice 3 beta" at the developer's website [3], you can also find a Linux "offline installer" for version 3 [4]. At 516MB, it is amazingly large, and I did not look inside. This beta installer is a self-extracting shell script that can be run by typing the following after download:
sh Alice3BetaInstaller-Complete-3.0.0.0.61-linux.sh
Alice is a 3D framework for Java with its own visual development platform – similar to Eclipse – so you probably only need to have Java and a few Java extensions (Beans) installed as a prerequisite. This is just a guess, though. If you try the beta, please let me know whether it worked. :-)
Note: Make sure you have the most recent stable JRE installed. The best compatibility is usually reached with Sun Microsystems Java [5].
Infos
- Knoppix source repository: http://debian-knoppix.alioth.debian.org/
- nVidia: http://www.nvidiadriver.org/
- Alice developer website: http://www.alice.org/
- Alice offline installer: http://kenai.com/projects/alice/downloads/directory/Alice%203.0.0.0.61
- Java: http://java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp?locale=en&host=java.com:80
« Previous 1 2
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
News
-
Cisco Releases Annual Security Report
Spammers go low-volume, and 90% of IE browsers are unpatched.
-
Zero Day Exploits Target Flash
Adobe scrambles to release patches for vulnerable Flash Player.
-
Intel Unveils Compute Stick
Four-inch-long computer on a stick lets you boot a full Linux system from any HDMI display device.
-
Obama Proposes Personal Data Notification Law
New statute would require companies to report break-ins to consumers.
-
TGXf Project Warns of File Transfer through Screen Pixels
Weird data transfer technique avoids all standard security measures.
-
Industry Giants Announce a Fix for the Password Mess
FIDO alliance declares the beginning of the end for old-style login authentication.
-
Poll: Vote for the Best Open Source Software for Photographers
The Linux New Media Awards have honored the most significant products, projects, people, and organizations for open source/Linux every year since 2000.
-
Debian Gets Forked
Legendary Uber-distro splits over the systemd controversy.
-
Linux Mint Project Releases Mint 17.1
New LTS version offers many refinements for the Cinnamon and Mate desktops and significant improvement under the hood.
-
CeBIT Open Source Forum Call for Papers
One of CeBIT’s most successful forums returns in 2015.