Using Blackboard Collaborate (Elluminate) on Ubuntu

By Leo Gaggl

October 20, 2011

Like it or not (personally I am in the second category) Blackboard Collaborate or Elluminate (as it is still more commonly referred to) is something you have a hard time avoiding if you work in online education.

I discovered that I have audio issues on some Ubuntu Linux machines and found the following to fix the issues.

1) Install alsa-aoss

apt-get install alsa-oss

2) Save the Elluminate Java Webstard (.JNLP) file to a local folder – DO NOT OPEN IN BROWSER
3) Launch Elluminate using this command (in the folder you saved the JNLP)

aoss javaws meeting.jnlp

Thanks go to all people involved in this forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081899

EDIT:

1) This assumes you are already running Sun (Oracle) Java JRE not the default OpenJDK as apparently Blackboard Collaborate does not play nice with the default OpenJDK. I have described the install on 11.10 here.

2) Make sure you have updated the alternatives for javaws (install only sets the java alternatives).

update-alternatives --config javaws