Trader Workstation(TWS) is a Java desktop trading platform for use with an Interactive Brokers account. I think that this is one of the better options out there for straightforward non-professional trading: the software has more features than any one individual is ever likely to even look at, let alone use, is frequently updated, and the commissions are low. I've used it for some years on Windows, but the time comes to make the move to Linux.

Here, then, is a recipe for setting up TWS on a new desktop machine running Ubuntu 13.04. This uses the January 6th 2014 build 943.1c of TWS, but I would expect it to work for future updates for a while yet: Interactive Brokers makes few changes to the fundamental structure of this application.

Log in As Your User

Log in with your user, the one who will be running TWS, and open up a command prompt.

Install Oracle Java 7

It may or may not matter which Java 7 JDK you use. But if there are issues with your choice then you might only discover that fact at a late and inopportune moment, while deep in use of TWS. The balance of online opinion and the requirements provided by Interactive Brokers point to going with Oracle Java over OpenJDK.

You'll want to run all of the following as root:

sudo su

Head off to Oracle's Java site and download the tar.gz file for the latest JDK. Unpack it into a subdirectory of /user/local/java. For example:

mkdir /usr/local/java
mv jdk-7u51-linux-x64.tar.gz /usr/local/java
cd /usr/local/java
tar -xf jdk-7u51-linux-x64.tar.gz
rm jdk-7u51-linux-x64.tar.gz

Then place some necessary environment additions into /etc/profile.d/java.sh, ensuring that each new bash session will have them:

cat <<EOF > /etc/profile.d/java.sh
JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export JAVA_HOME
export PATH
EOF

Then update alternatives to make this the default Java:

update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/java" 1
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/javac" 1
update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/javaws" 1
update-alternatives --set java /usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/java
update-alternatives --set javac /usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/javac
update-alternatives --set javaws /usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/javaws

Now drop back out of root and into your user - it's never a good plan to leave a command prompt open as root. You'll forget and do things that will be annoying to clean up, such as launching desktop applications as the root user rather than as your user.

exit

Install Java Browser Plugins

Since there are Java-based browser applications offered by Interactive Brokers, adding the necessary plugins to your browser is probably a good plan.

For Firefox, you just have to create a symlink to the plugin in the JDK such that Firefox can see it:

cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/local/java/jdk1.7.0_51/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

Chrome or Chrome-derived browsers like Iron should automatically discover the plugin on the next restart - so simply close any open browser windows and reopen them.

You can check to see whether the plugin is installed at the Java website. Note that Java-enabled pages in either browser will by default not automatically run Java applications, but will show a bar at the top of the page requesting permission for to use Java. This is the way you want things you be: automatically running Java applications in a browser is the road to ruin.

Install Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation

First create a place for TraderWorkstation in your home directory:

mkdir ~/TraderWorkstation
mkdir ~/TraderWorkstation/logs

Download the TWS JAR for Linux from Interactive Brokers. Then unpack it and move the resulting directory into ~/TraderWorkstation:

jar xf unixmacosx.jar
mv IBJts ~/TraderWorkstation/IBJts

Now create a script to launch TWS in ~/TraderWorkstation/launch.sh:

#!/bin/bash

DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "$0" )" && pwd)"
JTS_DIR=$DIR/IBJts
JTS_LOG_DIR=$DIR/logs

java -cp $JTS_DIR/jts.jar:$JTS_DIR/total.2013.jar \
  -Xmx1024M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M jclient.LoginFrame $JTS_DIR \
  >> $JTS_LOG_DIR/tws.log 2>&1

Give the script executable permissions:

chmod 744 ~/TraderWorkstation/launch.sh

You can now run TWS from the command line as your user with this script, and it will log its output to ~/TraderWorkstation/logs/tws.log. You should try it out at this point to make sure that everything works. No need to go beyond the login window: if you see that, then it is working.

~/TraderWorkstation/launch.sh

Add Trader Workstation to the Launcher

But why run from the command line when you can have an icon in the launcher on the Ubuntu desktop? The first thing to do in order to achieve this goal is obtain a suitable icon. Fortunately there are many included in the TWS jar files. For example, this obtains a blue "IB" icon:

cd /tmp
cp ~/TraderWorkstation/IBJts/jts.jar .
jar -xf jts.jar
cp trader/common/images/ibapp_icon.gif ~/TraderWorkstation

Create a file /usr/share/applications/trader-workstation.desktop that specifies how to launch TWS and which icon to display. Replace "/home/myuser" with the path to your user home directory:

sudo cat <<EOF > /usr/share/applications/trader-workstation.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name=Trader Workstation
Icon=/home/myuser/TraderWorkstation/ibapp_icon.gif
Exec=/home/myuser/TraderWorkstation/launch.sh
EOF
sudo update-desktop-database

Lastly search for "Trader Workstation" in the Unity Dash (click the top icon in the launcher) and then launch it. Lock the icon to the launcher when it appears, and you are good to go.

Cautions and Issues

Workspaces are multiple desktop windows in Ubuntu, enabled under Appearance -> Behavior in the settings panel. They are not enabled by default in 13.04, but if you do use workspaces then you may experience a blocking issue when launching TWS in anything other than the top left default workspace. You may find that some of the TWS windows, such as chart displays, don't render, but are instead fixed invisibly to the foreground, blocking access to all other windows in the workspace. This happens about half the time if you have four open windows in your TWS configuration.

Fortunately this issue doesn't manifest in 13.10 or later versions, and ideally everyone on 13.04 should be upgrading shortly.