[prog] Java and Linux

[Julie Hill]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Liz Burke-Scovill
<fiddledragon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a java developer - so for me it was just a matter of making sure that I
> had the sun jdk before I got started.

I'm a Java developer and I agree - Sun JDK - that was the key
difference for me on Linux. I've had bad experiences using the
distro-packaged Java and various Java apps, and once I abandoned those
and started downloading and installing my own stuff, everything worked
great from then on (especially Eclipse and Tomcat). But don't get me
wrong, I sincerely don't mean to bash the distros and their way of
packaging Java things because I know they've had legitimate reasons
for doing what they do, but I personally have never had a good
experience with the ones I tried.

I'm using Ubuntu Hardy Heron now, and the packaged Sun Java worked out
perfectly, but Tomcat and Eclipse I still keep under my control, not
their packages - I'm suspicious and distrustful now, so I've never
actually tried the Ubuntu versions and can't say how they work.

A friend recently had a very bad experience with RedHat Enterprise and
Java -- he's new to Java, and RH was by default using GCJ and he had
all sorts of interoperability problems. Could be CentOS has a similar
problem. He says because of libraries he ended up uninstalling GCJ
entirely to get Java and Tomcat working (he downloaded & installed
them himself) - but like I said, he's new to Java so he might have
over-reacted, too.

Julie