Installation and use ==================== To use Tachyon Sonics on Linux, you need to install a Java Runtime Environement (JRE) first. See http://openjdk.java.net/install/ for instructions on how to install a JRE on common distributions. Tachyon Sonics is launched by an .sh script. On most Linux distributions, the script works without modifications as long as a JRE has been installed. Customization & Exotic platforms ================================ The script uses the following environment variables if present: JAVA_HOME - Java installation directory. If not set, the "java" command is assumed to be in the path This can be either a jdk or jre directory. JRE_HOME - Java installation directory. This can be used in place of JAVA_HOME, but it must be a jre (not a jdk). JAVA_OPTS - Options to pass to the JVM For example: $ export JAVA_HOME=./openjdk-6-jre $ export JAVA_OPTS="-cacao -Xmx200m" $ ./Tachyon-Sonics.sh will launch Tachyon Sonics with a JRE installed in the "./openjdk-6-jre" directory, using the cacao JVM and 200 MB of RAM. The export options can be added directly to the Tachyon-Sonics.sh file. With some window manager, menus are bogus when the main window is maximized. This is a known bug in the OpenJDK. To fix it install the wmname tool (from the "suckless-tools" package) and add the following at the beginning of the Tachyon-Sonics.sh file: wmname Metacity You need to install a Java Runtime Environment before you can use Tachyon Sonics. The following Java Runtime Environments are recommended for best performance - x86 and amd64: OpenJDK 6 or greater - Java from Sun / Oracle is also known to work - IBM J9 is also known to work - Tachyon Sonics does *not* work with gcj or Apache Harmony - arm (soft float): JavaSE 7 embedded (headfull) from Oracle is the fastest. It is available as the 'oracle-java7-jdk' package. It can also be downloaded from Oracle's Java Embedded download page. - OpenJDK is also known to work, but is much slower - arm (hard float, including Raspberry PI): JavaSE 7 embedded (headfull) from Oracle is the fastest. It is available as the 'oracle-java7-jdk' package. It can also be downloaded from Oracle's Java Embedded download page. - OpenJDK is also known to work, but is much slower - ppc: IBM J9 gives the best results - It seems that the splash image crashes the JVM in some cases. As a workaround, add "-splash: " to the JAVA_OPTS environment variable before launching. - OpenJDK is also known to work, but is slower. This Linux version of Tachyon Sonics also runs on PC-BSD (FreeBSD), as long as the OpenJDK is configured with audio support.