Calvin Austin's Blog

Java on Fiesty Ubuntu - will anyone notice?

Now I had a few days to spare I decided to upgrade my system. I didn't get off to a good start going from breezy to dapper lost some of the packages I had. I then went from dapper to edgy but then my wireless would not work with ndiswrapper (kernel module had DMA allocation issues). Even the new bcm firmware cutter utility would freeze the OS and I had to remove the module from the module list.

I decided to continue with my final goal of getting to Fiesty. First it took all night, and then hung when the bcm cutter was installed. I repeated my previous removal of bcm43xx by booting into the live cd to get to my disk and then continued my update. ndiswrapper was not being loaded so with a quick modprobe ndiswrapper my wireless came to live!

Now for Java, I went to my firefox to http://java.com, the site appeared to be temporarily down. I then did java -version, hmm gcj not Sun Java. I then looked through my package maanger and found Sun Java. Both Java 5 and Java 6 could be downloaded. I went for Java 6

The install was straightfoward compared to the mess of faking ubuntu java dependencies before. I had to accept the DLJ license which was a little confusing as it referred to its own license version (1.1) instead of the Java I was using.

However, how many Ubuntu users will be actively looking for Sun Java. Maybe a clean install will ask but I think many developers will be oblivious to this new effort.

So now I have wireless and Java 6, If only there was now a 64bit browser plugin. I have been very tempted to cut my own, Juergen at Blackdown did a great effort but ran into many browser api compatibility problems. The painful part though is that the plugin is hardly a plugin at all, its essentially the JVM running embedded through some now very outdated APIs. While different groups did own the mozilla/netscape/java relationship before at Sun I think this got lost through many years of layoffs. Now maybe no-one owns it, or has little say to get the 64bit interface nice and clean :(

Comments

• "However, how many Ubuntu users will be actively looking for Sun Java. "

  Good question. I think that now it's up to us, developers, to play our part. For instance, when I distribute a Java app to Linux I'll now give instructions to users to download Java using apt-get instead of doing it manually. I would also hope that some script wizard would provide to the community an "installation script" which is able to figure out which Java is installed and eventually run apt-get on the fly before running the application. I mean: there's still some road to go for a seamless integration, but this has been a very important forward step.

  Posted by: fabriziogiudici on April 21, 2007 at 12:57 AM

• With the eventual move of jdk to main, once everything is released as free software, and builds, runs and does all the pretty dances, it'll simply be a standard package in the core, that the users don't have to apt-get separately. It will take another couple of months, but it's inevitable ;)

  Posted by: robilad on April 22, 2007 at 09:09 AM

• I noticed and couldn't be happier. It made installing everything just that much easier. As a developer, who happens to use Ubuntu, this was a great decision.

  Posted by: eko291 on April 23, 2007 at 07:12 AM

• robilad, that wasn't the question. The question was, who cares? (except for some Java developers who lack the skills to install the JDK themselves and are unwilling to learn)...
  As it is I had no problems whatsoever getting 5.0 installed under Ubuntu, couldn't care less about it being "free" in the cramped mindset of the FSF (in fact I consider their definition of "free" highly restrictive and a danger to the stability of the platform), so see no need for all this "new and improved" stuff whatsoever.
  And your average user couldn't care less about either the license or the programming language, all they want is for the software they get from Limewire or Bittorrent Pirate 2 Pirate streams to work.

  Posted by: jwenting on April 23, 2007 at 10:13 PM

• Who cares? Maybe some concerned decision maker, to whom one (the developer) can now point out:
  Look, it is integrated (snicker ...) into the platform. No need to worry about getting it up and running. No need for paying for and confining me to a Windows machine "just to be on the safe side" (snicker, snicker, snicker, ...)!

  Sure, NB, JDK and JRE already all installed fine before this "official integration", but "official" is better, because, well, "it is official" :-). It is about the image.

  Posted by: twe on April 24, 2007 at 03:31 AM

• I was thrilled to see it. After (k)ubuntu installs I always have to sidestep kaffe and gcj, do separate downloads, and modify environment variables to get a real, working java jdk and plugin.

  My customization time is now less than a minute -- before it was a real pain. BRAVO!

  Now we need to get Apple on board the Java6 train. They are again the worst OS for the latest java platform development.

  Posted by: kweinber on April 24, 2007 at 07:21 AM

• The worst OS for Java are the ones for which you don't get any decent Java JRE. I can develop on another machine if needed, but running a Java application without a JRE, well ... And Apple is definitely not the worst here. For example, I am trying to get an acceptable fast VM and a usable Java SE class library (headless) for an embedded device that happens to run an older 2.4 Linux kernel on a MIPSel based SoC. I would happily settle for 1.4 or even a 1.3 version. RAM is rather scare, but storage space for a JRE isn't. Kaffe, gjc, etc. don't cut it. I applaud their effort and commitment to build cleanroom Java versions, but they aren't fast enough for my purpose.

  There is no Sun or Blackdown Linux/MIPS Java SE version. AFAIK Blackdown once claimed they ported Sun Java SE to MIPS, but I can't find any sign of a release. There also seems to be some quarrels going on between Sun and MIPS about the usage of a particular assembler op-code of the MIPS processor, because the usage of the particular op-code requires a special license from MIPS (go figure ...).

  And since this is a hobby project, I can't turn to one of the commercial vendors who offer ports of Sun's JRE. I don't need bulk licensing in blocks of 1000 licenses.

  This is not the first time I can't get reasonable Java JRE support for a device. E.g. at the peak of the Java hype many PDA vendors offered some kind of Java implementation (typically PersonalJava). And then never upgraded to something more modern and usable. If there wouldn't be JavaME phones and IBM's JavaME for Windows Mobile there wouldn't be anything worth to mention in the PDA area these days.

  Posted by: twe on April 25, 2007 at 01:45 AM

• I forgot to add the very useful script that "Kilz" wrote to make using java 32bit in firefox32 painless

  Posted by: calvinaustin on May 10, 2007 at 03:49 PM

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