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This tip is for those of us who attending the University of Phoenix and are running Linux: The ALEKS program in the Center for Mathematics Excellence does not support our OS! I tried installing the Java plugin while running Internet Explorer 6 through WINE, but it was not successful! Luckily, I was able to install the plugin and can now use ALEKS through Firefox, while in Ubuntu (I’m not sure if these instructions are distro specific, but they do work for Ubuntu 7.10).

ALEKS does have an article that covers Firefox 1.0 and Linux, though we need to change a few variables, here’s a step-by-step (if you need more detailed help, just post your question below):

1. Make sure you have “Sun Java 6 Web Start” installed. Use apt-get or Synaptec to check.
2. Download the ALEKS plugin: aleksPack10.jar (6.4M)
3. Save the plugin into your Home directory:
   /home/{YOURUSERNAME}
4. We need to find your Java plugin directory, open Terminal and type:
   locate /lib/ext/
5. Note the plugin location. For me, the output was:
   /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/ext/
6. In Terminal, type the following (if you’re output from Step 5 was different, supplement it in Step 6):
   cp aleksPack10.jar /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/ext/
7. Restart Firefox