Scratch
imagine • program • share
Linux installers
Table of contents
Debian/Ubuntu Installer
Scratch 1.4 is now available on an Ubuntu Launchpad Personal Package Archive (PPA)
See "Adding this PPA to your system" on the page above for instructions on how to add the ppa to your sources.list with Synaptic so you can get updates automatically.
You can also download the package using the link below.
scratch_1.4.0.debian.12_i386.deb 10/28/2009
This is a Beta package. See the known issues below.
The source code for this package is hosted on Assembla We welcome help from the open source community!
Here is the Scratch Team on Launchpad.
Known Issues
Here are the known problems as of October 28, 2009
Support for Webcams in Scratch on Linux is still new, so if you have problems see the Linux_Camera_Plug-in wiki page for help.
- Midi playback is "faked" (doesn't use real midi libraries)
- There is no support for the Lego WeDo kit
- When system is using Compiz, Scratch does not repaint window after leaving fullscreen / presentation mode. Some users report that this problem is fixed in the next version of Ubuntu (9.10)
- Help related functions in the Help menu do not work.
- Users report sound recording is "choppy" in Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10
If you want to contribute your time and effort to port Scratch to Linux please let us know on this forum thread or e-mail us directly.
A bit of background about Scratch:
Scratch runs on Squeak, which is written in smalltalk, one of the first object oriented languages. So Scratch is an 'image' that runs in a squeak virtual machine built for a particular OS. Squeak is an Ubuntu package but we don't yet use the one from the repos - currently our Scratch package installs its own copy of the Squeak VM. You can find out more about Squeak and Scratch on our Source Code page.Older Linux packages / information:
Generic Linux installer
Before we got actively involved in the creation of an Ubuntu installer, we packaged an experimental version of a Linux installer created for Scratch 1.3.1. This installer uses David Thornburg and tookelso's perl script and overall structure. I was able to run it successfuly on my system (Thinkpad x300 with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10, 32-bit). A few things do not work:
- MIDI (drum and note blocks)
- .sb file type association
- Sound input/output. I get some errors but it could be just a problem with my system.
ALSA lib pulse.c:272:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Timeout
startSound: snd_pcm_open: Connection refused
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
ALSA lib pulse.c:272:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Timeout
(NOTE: The sound issues may arise from the fact that the Ubuntu Squeak package is missing the vm-sound-ALSA file for some reason. -- JHM)
Compiling
You should not need to recompile anything if you are using a recent version of Ubuntu (7.x or 8.x). However, if you do need to rebuild the binaries, the source code for the Squeak virtual machine is available at http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/ and the source code for the special Scratch plugins is available here.
