First things first: the joke. If Pluribus were writing this post, it would read as follows:

1. Don't.
2. Install R.

I, however, have nothing like the massive kung fu that he has. In fact, one would say that if he is Master Shifu, then this is me:

That being said, as much as I like R, I'm still dependent on SPSS to do what I want to do, and while I love Ubuntu and Linux at large, I still have some massive mis-steps. This is a how-to built out of one of those mis-steps.

Part of what I hope that you get out of this is learning how to think about trouble shooting a problem like this. More important than learning a body of knowledge is learning how to think about that body of knowledge and find what you need.  God only knows that I don't have the contents of every man page memorized, but I know how to read them. So, here are some rules to remember.

1. Man pages are great, but they're not the only body of knowledge you need to solve problems.
2. Google is your friend.
3. Google is your friend.
4. Don't bang your head against the desk, wall, ground, etc.
5. Booze is not the answer.

So, what was the specific problem that I had? I had a perfectly legal copy of SPSS 16 (Quick aside: If you download an illegal torrent and it has a file like keygen.exe in it, there is less than a 1% chance that it's NOT a trojan. Do not run this file or anything like it. You will pay a horrible price.) that I was trying to install on my Ubuntu laptop, which is a Dell Inspiron with an Intel Core Duo processor.  I followed all the normal instructions, which are:

1. Create a mount point for the CD or ISO.
2. Mount the CD/ISO.
3. Switch directories over to your mounted SPSS.
4. From a term, issue the following : sudo ./setup.bin

This should take over your term and call up a new window that's supposedly an SPSS installation window.  Only, it won't.  Oh, the term will get taken over and a new window will get called up, but it will seemingly stall there. This new installer window will sit there, completely blank, and seemingly non-responsive. The rest of your system will function normally, but this window will sit there, blank as a Republican's mind. What to do? Well, there won't be anything in the man pages, so what to do? Go to step 2: Google is your friend.

My search string was ubuntu forum installing spss blank screen.  This took me here, where I found the following:

Do you have compiz running?

Try to turn it off.

Cheers J.B.

Hmm...Compiz? What is this? Apparently, it's something that handles desktops and windows.  So, it looks like Compiz doesn't like working with Java. Now, one thing that we know about SPSS 16 is that it's written in Java, so this could be the problem.  How to solve this? Well, here's what I found. From a term, issue metacity --replace.  When you're ready to go back to compiz, issue compiz --replace.

Go back and try running the installer again. SUCCESS!

So, what not to do? Don't assume that the problem is with your software. Provided that you have a legal copy of the software, the odds that you have a defective copy are so small so as to not consider.  Don't assume that you're an idiot or that your Linux machine is broken.  These days, installing Linux is so automated and foolproof that you most likely did not break it.  Don't start drinking. I did this, and it's counter-productive.

Check Google. You'd be surprised at how many communities exist just for troubleshooting problems, and how many people have had the same problems that you are.  See what you can find, and check it out.

Anyway, at the end of all this, you should have SPSS 16 working in Ubuntu.  Next step: mastering SPSS.

DD