A better experience on Ubuntu

[Rakesh]

Hi,

Dick has mentioned many times how he runs Ubuntu quite happily for personal and work tasks. I use Ubuntu at work and find it lacking in a few areas.

I have also ordered a new PC for home and would like to run Ubuntu on that but would be grateful for some advice on dealing with some issues I have found:

1. Running IntelliJ - really bad fonts. Have googled various times to improve this but nothing really satisfies.

2. If unhappy with the default versions of apps in the repository I have to do manual installs - latest version of ant or ruby for example were nightmares to upgrade.

Thanks

Rakesh

[Jan Goyvaerts]

right ! but there was a discussion in this group about the best font for an ide. I applied the advice and now it looks just great. :-)

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[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2011-09-17 at 08:20 +0100, Rakesh wrote:
[ . . . ]

>
> 1. Running IntelliJ - really bad fonts. Have googled various times to
> improve this but nothing really satisfies.

It's not the fonts per se, it's a Java problem — Java font rendering on
Linux is terrible. No company sees fixing this as in their commercial
interest, so it doesn't get fixed. I guess JetBrains only get an income
stream from Windows and OS X folk, so don't care about Linux.

> 2. If unhappy with the default versions of apps in the repository I
> have to do manual installs - latest version of ant or ruby for example
> were nightmares to upgrade.

No idea about Ruby, but installing the latest Ant on Debian Testing (and
hence Debian anything and Ubuntu anything) is really straightforward and
about a 2 minute task. On the other hand 1.8.2 is the standard on
Debian Testing so no need for a manual install.

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[ags]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Russel Winder <rus...@russel.org.uk> wrote:

On Sat, 2011-09-17 at 08:20 +0100, Rakesh wrote:
[ . . . ]

> 2. If unhappy with the default versions of apps in the repository I
> have to do manual installs - latest version of ant or ruby for example
> were nightmares to upgrade.

No idea about Ruby, but installing the latest Ant on Debian Testing (and
hence Debian anything and Ubuntu anything) is really straightforward and
about a 2 minute task.  On the other hand 1.8.2 is the standard on
Debian Testing so no need for a manual install.

I use scripts for installing grails, ants, glassfish etc. They were created as I was tired of setting version X from a repo again and again. 

Now it's become my default way of setting up java environment. I like it, works for me perfectly :-)

--

ags

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Russel Winder <rus...@russel.org.uk> wrote:

I guess JetBrains only get an income
stream from Windows and OS X folk, so don't care about Linux.

Isn't that a bit harsh to JetBrains? It seems to me that pretty much every single Java application (and even non-Java apps) have terrible font rendering problems on Linux.

It's been this way for decades. That and bad scrolling speed in terminal windows (maybe the two are related).

-- 

Cédric

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2011-09-17 at 22:35 -0700, Cédric Beust ♔ wrote:
>
[ . . . ]

> Isn't that a bit harsh to JetBrains? It seems to me that pretty much
> every single Java application (and even non-Java apps) have terrible
> font rendering problems on Linux.
>

Yes and no. Yes JetBrains are a good bunch of people and a lot of
people like and buy (or freetard :-) their products.

Every Java application on Linux looks totally crap, because Sun only
ever put real effort into getting the Windows graphics working, leaving
Solaris, Linux and Unix out in the cold.

Applications that work in harmony with GTK or Qt either on Gnome or KDE
have very good looking fonts — assuming the fonts outlines are good, and
the right hinting level for the outlines is used.

>
> It's been this way for decades. That and bad scrolling speed in
> terminal windows (maybe the two are related).

That may be true on Windows, but OS X is sort of OK and Linux seems
fine.

[Michael Barker]

Have you tried Java 7?  A few of my Intellij using colleagues are reporting improved fonts and performance under Swing after upgrading from 6.

Mike.

[Russel Winder]

Of course JetBrains do not support IntelliJ IDEA running on OpenJDK only
on Sun JDK.

OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea7 2.0pre) (7~b147-2.0~pre4-1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)
WARNING: You are launching IDE using OpenJDK Java runtime

THIS IS STRICTLY UNSUPPORTED DUE TO KNOWN PERFORMANCE AND GRAPHICS
PROBLEMS

NOTE: If you have both Sun JDK and OpenJDK installed
please validate either IDEA_JDK or JDK_HOME environment variable points
to valid Sun JDK installation

[Rakesh]

hmmmm,

I'll give Java 7 a go but it seems that bad fonts are still an issue. Shame, the rendering of IntelliJ on Windows is really nice (and not bad on a Mac, I used to like Monaco myself).

Rakesh

[Meteor]

How about try Eclipse on Ubuntu?
Because I use Eclipse on Ubuntu. And I think it is OK.
Besides, you can install Android SDK on Eclipse. I always use Eclipse as Android emulator.

[James Perkins]

I found the Nimbus Look and Feel in IDEA on Fedora looks much better than the other L&F's.

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James R. Perkins

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On 09/18/2011 01:52 PM, Russel Winder wrote:
>
> Of course JetBrains do not support IntelliJ IDEA running on OpenJDK only
> on Sun JDK.

Interesting, because AFAIU there will be no more Sun/Oracle jdk in Linux
distros, only OpenJDK 7.

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fabrizio...@tidalwave.it
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[James Perkins]

You can download the Oracle JDK 7 for Linux (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-se-jdk-7-download-432154.html). I think Fedora has only provided IcedTea OpenJDK for a while now via their update utilities.
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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On 09/20/2011 02:35 AM, James Perkins wrote:
> You can download the Oracle JDK 7 for Linux
> (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-se-jdk-7-download-432154.html).
> I think Fedora has only provided IcedTea OpenJDK for a while now via
> their update utilities.

Sure, but the default stuff will be OpenJDK 7. I suppose that those bugs
in OpenJDK 7 that IntelliJ is referring to should be definitely fixed
now that OpenJDK 7 is the final, reference version for Linux.

[Johan Mynhardt]

Like someone (jrp) said, the Nimbus LaF looks pretty neat, even when using the GTK+ theme it looks good if you choose a suited font. The UI font doesn't really matter as much as the editor font, which looks really good IMHO.

I don't see why using non-standard versions of applications is a nightmare. At work all the developers run Ubuntu/Kubuntu and it's really not a pain. Something that makes it really easy is the 'update-alternatives' utility. Long story short, you can add multiple versions and just switch to the version you feel like using.

[Rakesh]

So I upgraded to Sun Java 7:

1. Intellij looks no different (but surprisingly more responsive!)

2. Eclipse on Ubuntu looks great out-of-the-box.

There's talk of Nimbus and other look and feels but where is this configured for Intellij?

R

On 20 September 2011 19:38, Johan Mynhardt <johanm...@gmail.com> wrote:

Like someone (jrp) said, the Nimbus LaF looks pretty neat, even when using the GTK+ theme it looks good if you choose a suited font. The UI font doesn't really matter as much as the editor font, which looks really good IMHO.

I don't see why using non-standard versions of applications is a nightmare. At work all the developers run Ubuntu/Kubuntu and it's really not a pain. Something that makes it really easy is the 'update-alternatives' utility. Long story short, you can add multiple versions and just switch to the version you feel like using.

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[James Perkins]

File -> Settings -> Appearance. From there  you should be able to select your look and feel.
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[Rakesh]

so I can change the L&F of Intellij and its nicer but it doesn't really affect the fonts.

Eclipse looks acceptable out-of-the-box on Ubuntu. Yes, I know its not a Swing client but is Java really that bad at doing decent fonts? In 2011?

Rakesh

[ricky.c...@gmail.com]

Nope, works great on Windows.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

---

From: Rakesh <rakesh.m...@gmail.com>

Sender: java...@googlegroups.com

Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 13:40:34 +0100

To: <java...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: java...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Re: A better experience on Ubuntu

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:40:34 +0200, Rakesh <rakesh.m...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> so I can change the L&F of Intellij and its nicer but it doesn't really
> affect the fonts.
>
> Eclipse looks acceptable out-of-the-box on Ubuntu. Yes, I know its not a
> Swing client but is Java really that bad at doing decent fonts? In 2011?

Can we have a screenshot when talking of fonts? One never knows whether
there's actually a problem or it's a matter of expectations.

[Tim]

Has anyone tried out the Ubuntu monospace font? I haven't gotten around to it myself (may not be a great programmer's font) but it should render nice on ubuntu.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 5:40 AM, Rakesh <rakesh.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

so I can change the L&F of Intellij and its nicer but it doesn't really affect the fonts.

Eclipse looks acceptable out-of-the-box on Ubuntu. Yes, I know its not a Swing client but is Java really that bad at doing decent fonts?

It's not a Java problem, it's a Swing problem.

-- 

Cédric

[Mark Fortner]

I'm curious if you've tried turning on the font anti-aliasing settings in Linux? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179955/how-do-you-enable-anti-aliasing-in-arbitrary-java-apps

If so did it make any difference to what you were seeing?

Regards,

Mark

2011/10/4 Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>