Installing BEA Workshop on Ubuntu...a nightmare

I am writing a followup to my Devx.com Java IDE review that will focus on Oracle's JDeveloper and BEA Workshop Studio. While JDeveloper worked like a charm at first try, getting BEA Workshop Studio to install on Ubuntu 7.04 is like pulling your own teeth with a dollar-store dentistry tool...without anesthesia.

To be fair to them, they explicitly state they only support Fedora, but so far I have been able to install about every Java IDE on the planet on my Ubuntu box without any major issues. But I think for BEA Workshop I am finally ready to give up.

Everything from complaining about *.so files that are missing (when they are in fact installed) to stating there is no Java VM on the path (when one clearly shows up when doing 'echo $PATH$'), you name it....the final straw is that after I found a post about using some obscure LAX_VM switch (see here) the WorkshopInstaller.bin file responded with this wonderful error:

jacek@vista:~/Downloads/bea$ sh WorkshopInstaller.bin LAX_VM /home/jacek/Dev/Java/JDK/jdk1.6.0_02/bin
Preparing to install...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...
/bin/ls: /home/jacek/Dev/Java/JDK/jdk1.6.0_02/./jcontrol -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 1080 Apr 12 06:09 HtmlConverter -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47579 Apr 12 06:06 appletviewer -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47704 Apr 12 06:06 apt -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 extcheck -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47251 Apr 12 06:06 idlj -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jar -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 jarsigner -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47116 Apr 12 06:06 java -r-xr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 1790 Apr 12 05:58 java-rmi.cgi -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47744 Apr 12 06:06 javac -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47704 Apr 12 06:06 javadoc -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47700 Apr 12 06:06 javah -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47736 Apr 12 06:06 javap -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 74551 Apr 12 06:09 javaws -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jconsole -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 6347 Apr 12 06:09 jcontrol -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 jdb -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jhat -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47423 Apr 12 06:06 jinfo -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47391 Apr 12 06:06 jmap -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jps -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 jrunscript -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 jsadebugd -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47423 Apr 12 06:06 jstack -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jstat -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 jstatd -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 keytool -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 native2ascii -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47487 Apr 12 06:06 orbd -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47323 Apr 12 06:06 pack200 -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47647 Apr 12 06:06 policytool -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47736 Apr 12 06:06 rmic -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47255 Apr 12 06:06 rmid -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 rmiregistry -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47319 Apr 12 06:06 schemagen -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47768 Apr 12 06:06 serialver -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47251 Apr 12 06:06 servertool -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47487 Apr 12 06:06 tnameserv -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 189268 Apr 12 06:06 unpack200 -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47287 Apr 12 06:06 wsgen -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47319 Apr 12 06:06 wsimport -rwxr-xr-x 1 jacek jacek 47319 Apr 12 06:06 xjc: File name too long
shift: 1783: can't shift that many

(yes, I named my Linux box "vista"...just to fool any script kiddies out there)...

Looks like I will have to review the Windows version of this one instead...a pity...