The Processing Environment 
	(IDE) runs on various Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems. Programs written with
Processing run on various versions of Java.

Supported Platforms
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux
Other Platforms
Java Versions

Top Supported Platforms

The Processing Development Environment (PDE) is "officially" tested with:

  1. Mac OS X 10.4 (PPC and Intel)
  2. Windows XP (and a little bit o' Vista)
  3. Ubuntu Linux (whatever is most recent)
These are the operating systems that are on machines at the Processing Release Testing And Quality Assurance Center (the PRTAQAC, which bears a suspicious resemblance to the living room of Ben's apartment). Builds usually get the most testing on OS X, and a cursory test on Windows and Linux. If you run into trouble, you've gotta let us know, the PRTAQAC is badly understaffed.

Top Windows

Windows is by far the superior platform for running Java applications. It's not because we like Windows the best but that's just how it is.

The release is split into versions with and without Java. The non-Java version is only recommended for people who know what they're doing and have Java 1.4 installed. If you have trouble getting Processing to run properly, one of the first things you should try is downloading the version that includes Java, rather than the one without.

Windows 95/98/ME is a piece of crap, but since lots of people (are often forced to) use it, we'll do our best to support it. Windows 95 is not supported. Releases seem to often have trouble with 98/ME, so if possible, we strongly recommend using Windows 2000 or XP. We won't be testing on 95/98/ME or supporting it any more than we absolutely must.

Top Mac OS X

Java on Mac OS X has always dragged behind other platforms. Java performance on the Intel Macs is improved significantly over PowerPC machines, on which Java ran almost half the speed. Unfortunately Apple seems to have a completely arrogant attitude about Java and wants everyone to code their applications using things like Cocoa, seemingly unaware of their current marketshare.

Notes about Processing on Intel Macs: More information about Java on OS X can be found at Apple's Java FAQ.

Top Linux

For the Linux version, you guys can support yourselves. If you're enough of a hacker weenie to get a linux box set up, you oughta know what's going on. For lack of time, we won't be testing extensively under linux, but would be really happy to hear about any bugs or issues you might run into. Actually, we don't get happy that you're having issues, but if you're going to have issues, we're happy that you tell us about them, so we can fix them.

The Processing application is just a shell script, you can use this as a guide to getting Processing to run with your specific configuration, because who knows what sort of setup you have. Replacing (or making a symlink to) the contents of the ‘java’ folder will let you tie in a preferred Java VM for your machine.

Note that the GNU Classpath, GCJ, GIJ combination will not work with Processing. You'll need a regular Java release downloaded from Sun. OpenJDK and IcedTea are also unlikely to work, however we'll update this as those projects progress.

If you get Processing to run properly, the Sketch → Show Sketch Folder command may not be available. Processing will attempt to find kde-open and gnome-open, and if neither is available, the menu item will be dimmed. To fix this, you must set a launcher for your platform. Add a line to preferences.txt that specifies its location:
launcher.linux = /path/to/launcher_app


Getting Processing to run on Linux can be tricky, mostly because of Jikes. Some information on getting it to work can be found here under the Linux section. Similar to the Java folder, you can symlink a proper jikes in place of the distributed version and you should be all set. However make sure that you're using Jikes 1.22, otherwise things may not work properly.

If anyone out there knows how to properly build a version of Jikes that's compatible across all (or at least a wide range of) distros, please let us know. We're not Linux gurus so we don't know all the tricks.

Using Fedora Core 4, I had to install compat-libstdc++-33 and xorg-x11-deprecated-libs in order to get things to run properly with the current distribution. Let's hear it for library dependencies!

Top Other Platforms

Because Processing is written in Java, it should run on any platform that supports Java 1.4. If you'd like to get it running on BSD, Irix, AmigaOS, BeOS... whatever, do the following:

  1. Download the Linux version, and replace the “java” folder and jikes application with versions that support your platform. The files can by symbolic links to your Java Runtime installation (note how the folder hierarchy works to make sure you're linking the right thing) or Jikes executable.
  2. Next, mess with the shell script if necessary to get things up and running.
  3. If you have success, share the details for others.

Top Java Versions

There are several versions of Java, each with a different story. The versions from 1.2 to 1.4 are also referred to with names like "Java 2 SDK 1.2" or "J2SE 1.4" (Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4). J2SE is different from the trimmed-down J2ME ("Micro Edition") which runs on mobile devices, and J2EE ("Enterprise Edition") which contains more "enterprise" related bloat. In a moment of further anti-user marketing genius, Sun recently decided to call the next release "Java 5.0" when promoting, but it's Java 1.5 to developers. Proving that they could outdo themselves in idiocy, the release that followed is called JDK 6.