I recently upgraded my Ubuntu Linux distribution from 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS. Although I’ve used GNOME for the last decade+, I’m adjusting fairly quickly to the Unity desktop environment. However, one thing that wasn’t apparent is how to add an icon for the IDL Workbench to the launcher. This is easy to do in GNOME, and, as it turns out, it’s not very hard to do in Unity. With a little googling, I found this helpful example of adding a Netbeans IDE icon to the Unity launcher, which I’ve adapted for IDL.
Start by creating a file idlde.desktop with your favorite text editor and adding the following lines to the file (syntax highlighting courtesy Emacs):
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=IDL 8.2 Comment=Start the IDL Workbench Exec=/bin/sh "/usr/local/exelis/idl82/bin/idlde" Icon=/usr/local/exelis/idl82/idlde/plugins/com.rsi.idldt_8.2.0/icons/idlde64.png Categories=Application;Development;IDL;IDE Version=8.2 Type=Application Terminal=0
Save the file. From Nautilus, drag-n-drop the file onto the Unity launcher. That’s it! You now have a Unity launcher icon for the IDL Workbench (see the screenshot from my laptop). Click on the icon to start the Workbench.
Note that if you delete the .desktop file, the launcher icon disappears, so keep it in a safe place; e.g., /usr/share/applications.
Hi Mark,
Very glad to know that IDL works with 12.04. However after installing ENVI+IDL, when i try to open ENVI, I am getting a message that ENVI 5.0 is not supported for this platform.
My system: Kernel Linux 3.2.0-23-generic-pae
The help files says Linux: Kernel 2.6.9, glibc 2.3.4, GTK+ 2.4.13 is supported.
Can you please help to find out what is the issue
–
Thanks
Sreekumar
Hi Sreekumar,
ENVI 5.0 is only available on 64-bit Linux distros. Might this be the issue?
mp
Hi Mark,
I been working with IDL7.1 for two years in the Ubuntu and it was working perfect! But I decided to change to the newest version (12.04.1) and I have been trying to install again IDL71 but I have had this problem ”/media/IDL71/unix/xinstall.sh: 329: exec: ./xinstall: not found”. Could you please help me to solve it?
Thanks
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian
I had the same problem today, reinstalling idl71 after a difficult upgrade attempt to 12.10
I had to come back to 12.04.
You need to be root (sudo su)
Create a directory “itt” inside usr/local and go in it (cd usr/local ; mkdir itt; cd itt)
root@ubuntu:/usr/local/itt# sh /media/IDL71/unix//xinstall.sh -NOGUI
Unix IDL Non-GUI installation
—————————–
The IDL distribution will be installed in the current directory:
/usr/local/itt.
If this is correct, enter “y” to continue the
installation. If it is not correct, enter “n” to quit the
installation, change to the correct location, and run this
script again.
Is the installation directory shown correct? (y/n): y
IDL is available for many different systems. In order to conserve disk space, we only install the those you need. You will now be asked a series of questions to determine which versions of IDL to install:
Linux – X86 (32-bit/64-bit)? (y/n): y
Mac OS X – PowerPC? (y/n): n
Mac OS X – Intel (32-bit/64-bit)? (y/n): n
Sun Solaris – Sparc (32-bit/64-bit)? (y/n): n
Sun Solaris – x86 (64-bit)? (y/n): n
IDL has optional subsets that need not be installed for normal operation, but which enhance the package when present. In order to conserve disk space, we only install those
you specify. If you have the room, we recommend installing them. If you are installing IDL for demonstration or evaluationpurposes, you should install these subsets.
You will now be asked a series of questions to determine which optional subsets to install:
High Resolution Maps (45 Mbytes)? (y/n): y
DICOM Network Services (2.5 Mbytes)? (y/n): y
————————————————————-
Summary:
Product: IDL
Installation location: /usr/local/itt
Login: root
Platforms:
Linux – X86 (32-bit/64-bit)
Optional subsets:
High Resolution Maps (45 Mbytes)
————————————————————-
The configuration above will be installed on your system unless you indicate otherwise now.
Install the above configuration? (y/n): y
….