Here is a quick guide on installing a development environment (using the Eclipse IDE) for Android applications on Ubuntu 9.10.

1. Open the Synaptic package manager and install the sun-java6-jdk and the eclipse package (and of-course accept the depending packages).

2. Verify that you have a working java enviroment by running java -version in a terminal.

3. Download the lasted version of the Android SDK at android.com (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html).

4. Unpack the SDK file to your home directory (or somewhere else – its your choice)

5. Open the newly installed Eclipse IDE.

6. In Eclipse goto the Help menu and select the Install New Software

7. Click Add and create a site with this url: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/

8. Now search for wst and install the WST Server Adapters.

9. Add another site with this url: http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ and install the Android Development Tools.

10. Select the Window menu in Eclipse and open the preferences. Select the Android section and set the SDK location to the directory where the SDK in unpacked (in sted 4).

11. Open a terminal/command prompt, go to the tools directory inside the SDK (which we unpacked in step 4) and run the android program. Select the Settings menu and check the Force https .. field. Then go to the Available Packages and select which version(s) that you want to develop to. When done, close the program.

The IDE is now ready to go.

Further reading could be the Hello World tutorial over at android.com (http://developer.android.com/guide/tutorials/hello-world.html) that also lists how to setup an emulator for testing the applications. (something like android create avd --target 1 --name my_avd)

I hope this can help you get started.

Please post any comments you may have.