For part three of my Linux installation adventures I will be covering the advanced installation, this will be similar to the requirements of the previous article except this time the programs needed are for work use and therefore I can't substitute then with suitable replacements as it would throw me out of sync with the rest of the office. For this installation to be deemed a success I will need to install the following programs:

• Eclipse IDE with the PHPEclipse and Aptana plugins

• ESRI Arc Map

• Opera and Internet Explorer (I'm a web developer!)

• Macromedia Fireworks and Flash

This is not going to be as simple an exercise as the previous install and the reason for this is that two of the programs on my list namely ArcMap and Internet Explorer are proprietary software that have no native support for Linux. The other programs also may have some issues which I will explain as I go along. For this part of this series of articles were going to have to start using the command line to install some things and make some changes to system files, this article is supposed to be an overview of my experiences in making the transition to Linux rather than a tutorial on how you can do it yourself, if there is anything that you don't follow or understand then Google is you friend, there you will find all the answers that you require.

First I want to install the additional browsers Opera and Internet Explorer. Opera is very straight forward, just go to www.opera.com and download the Ubuntu deb file, once downloaded just double click on the .deb file and the Opera installer will start and talk you through the very simple installation. Internet Explorer is a little more tricky as it is the first program which we'll be installing that isn't directly supported by the vendor, which in this case is Microsoft. “If it's not supported by the vendor, then how is this possible?” I hear you asking. The answer in Wine, Wine is a complete port of the Windows API which makes it possible to run Windows programs on Linux with varying degrees of success. To see which applications can be run on Linux using Wine please check their database of programs - http://appdb.winehq.org/ . Fortunately for us Internet Explorer 6 is one of the programs that has been brought to Linux thanks to the work of the guys at Ies4Linux where you can find the full install instructions. I followed the instructions except instead of installing Wine via the command line I installed it using add/remove from the GUI.

Next on the list was Fireworks and Flash, there are alternatives to Fireworks available for Linux such as Gimp or Inkscape but these tools to me seem inferior and as with any graphics package involve a sizable learning curve in order to master them. To install the these we once again used Wine which we installed along with Internet Explorer. The process was as simple as moving the fully installed application folders from Windows across to the ./wine directory of our Ubuntu box. I followed the tutorial here to complete the install. Fireworks and Flash work flawlessly on Linux using Wine, which is a testament to the level of maturity that Wine is now reaching.

Last on my list of applications to install was the Eclipse IDE. I thought this one would be a breeze as it has native Linux support, but how wrong I was. The actual install went well and was a simple add/remove click 'ok' type install and everything worked great. The problems came when it came to installing the plugins. When I installed PHPEclipse and Aptana I was greeted with frequent error messages and crashes. After some Googling I discovered that some of the plugins don't work well with the Ubuntu version of Java, so it need to be replaced with Sun's version. A tutorial on how to do this can be found here - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=201378&highlight=eclipse . Although Eclipse has been installed and appears to be working, I haven't really put it through its paces yet with a couple of days work, once I have I will report back on any bugs or new issues that I encounter.

Last but not least on my list in ArcMap from ESRI, this was the one I had been dreading. It is a complex monster of a program which has enough trouble running in a stable manor on the operating system for which it was designed, never mind one that it was not. After looking into the options, it appears Wine was out of the question, this meant the only way I was going to pull it off was with a virtual machine, VMWare offer their server and player as freeware, the software allows you install additional operating systems within you existing operating system. Once installed you can view that operating system inside a window of your Linux box.

Installing VMWare server was surprisingly easy, I had always though that due to its complexity it would be a nightmare to configure, but that was not the case. Once again I was able to find solid documentations and tutorials, this is another one of the great things about using Ubuntu, there seems to be a large amount of solid tutorials that don't have to be translated from geek-speak. Following this article, I was able to get VMWare server up and running without any real problems.

Once installed I followed this tutorial to get Windows XP Professional installed, although WMWare was so user friendly that a tutorial wasn't really necessary, but gave me peace of mind non the less. Once installed I was free to run any Windows software I liked, including ArcMap. This meant I had now ported my entire work environment to Linux without having to make any major sacrifices on the software front. I was so pleased with the ease with which additional operating systems could be added using Vmware server, that I also installed our custom Slackware operating system that we use on our work, testing and production servers. As far as I could see there was only one negative with using VMWare and that was that although the processing and load times were reasonable, there was a noticeable slowdown in the screen refresh rate making some applications seem a little clunky.

To sum up I have to say the full transition from Windows to Linux was far less painful than I was expecting and this was mostly down to the ease with which Ubuntu can be set up, configured and upgraded. It is definitely the first flavour of Linux which I have used which I believe is capable of breaking out into the mainstream.