Problems of Installing racket

Question

I am using Ubuntu... I am trying to install racket from their website http://racket-lang.org/download/...

After installation, under racket/, there are bin, collects, doc, include, lib and man as folders and README.

I try to run DrRacket, Racket, Gracket or raco, it tells me always The program 'drracket' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install racket

So it seems that it has not been installed... Could anyone help?

I also try sudo apt-get install racket, but the download suspends:

After this operation, 299 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
0% [Connecting to us.archive.ubuntu.com (91.189.92.182)]

it is always 0%... Could anyone help?

PS: after a long while... I got a message:

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe racket-common all 5.1.1+dfsg1-2
  Could not connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (91.189.92.184), connection timed out [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe racket i386 5.1.1+dfsg1-2
  Unable to connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe racket-doc all 5.1.1+dfsg1-2
  Unable to connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/r/racket/racket-common_5.1.1+dfsg1-2_all.deb  Could not connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (91.189.92.184), connection timed out [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/r/racket/racket_5.1.1+dfsg1-2_i386.deb  Unable to connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/r/racket/racket-doc_5.1.1+dfsg1-2_all.deb  Unable to connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com:http: [IP: 91.189.92.184 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?

Edit1: Another question is how to uninstall the package that I downloaded from their web site... May I just do a rm -rf?

Answer 1

The installer from the racket download page has two modes, which you choose as an answer to the first question it asks you. The single directory mode puts the whole thing in one directory which you can later uninstall by just removing. In this mode, the installer should also ask you for a place to put symlinks to the binaries (the ones in the bin subdirectory), and those should be placed in some directory that you have in your $PATH.

The convenient thing about this kind of setup is that you can install it anywhere you want, without requiring root access. It's also convenient in that you can later rename and move it around, and use multiple versions.

If running those commands (which should be in lower-case, btw) produces that output, then it seems that you have stub files that produce it. (And I don't know why that would be done, so clarifications on these files are welcome.) Finally, note that the PPA that Asumu pointed to is kept very updated with the recent release, so it would be better than whatever the default is.

Answer 2

Did you try running apt-get update like the error message suggested? This often happens when your package list is out-of-date.

You probably do want to install this through your Linux distro, but if you want to use the version you've already installed, you probably just need to add the racket/bin directory to your path. i.e., add something like export PATH="$HOME/racket/bin/:$PATH" to your .bashrc.

On Ubuntu you can also use a PPA that Jon Rafkind has set up so that you can install it with apt-get. The page for the PPA has an "Adding this PPA to your system" section that explains how to install it.