1275: Arduino IDE on amd64

The compiled packages available at arduino.cc works out of the box only for 32-bit architecture. For 64 bit you have two options

1. Download the normal package and do a small tweaking
       Instructions for the same are available here. The explanation is for Gutsy, Hardy etc. (So they obviously work for the true-blooded Debian systems) Effectively just a simple modification to use system library version of librxtx rather than the packaged one. I am not repeating the steps in the hope that the site would be up for a long time to come (technology has a short shelf life anyway)

2. Check out the trunk from svn and build
      I prefer this solution, not only due to my great love for svn trunks, but also due to the fact that you are more upto date in terms of developments, and it somehow feels like a purer way of doing things. The building instructions are here.

sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-jdk sun-java5-bin unzip zip gcc-avr avr-libc (install the necessary packages)

svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/arduino/trunk (check out the trunk.. not a small download ..really)

and then simply build.

Once you have the ide up and running things are relatively simple.  Read about the already intuitive ide elements if you want,  Blink a few times ( Arduino Hello World) and go on to further adventures (ok. guided tours).