java/linux (was: Re: [svlug] Good linux distro for learning programming)

[David N. Welton]

David Hummel <dhml at comcast.net> writes:

> On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 11:50:02AM -0700, James Todd wrote:

> > Fair enough. Not including it in the distro for licensing concerns
> > is one thing but Java does run on way more one or two systems as
> > was implied:

> > David Welton wrote:

> > >have to download it and install it yourself, and it only runs on one
> > >(or two?)  of the many architectures that Linux supports.

>                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > That's just not true and I wanted to clarify that.

> Actually it does appear to be true.  I don't see binaries for MIPS,
> Alpha, S/390, and others on any of Sun's download sites (or maybe I
> didn't dig deep enough?).

I got to this page:

https://sdlcweb2b.sun.com/ECom/EComActionServlet/LegalPage:~:com.sun.sunit.sdlc.content.LegalWebPageInfo;jsessionid=sdlcweb2b.sun.com-1da23%3A41840934%3Ab964adcbe484e3c2

It lists, for the J2SE SDK:

 Linux RPM in self-extracting file  (jdk-1_5_0-linux-i586-rpm.bin, 42.50 MB) Download Now!
 Linux self-extracting file (jdk-1_5_0-linux-i586.bin, 43.95 MB) Download Now!

 Linux AMD64 RPM in self-extracting file  (jdk-1_5_0-linux-amd64-rpm.bin, 39.14 MB) Download Now!
 Linux AMD64 self-extracting file (jdk-1_5_0-linux-amd64.bin, 40.11 MB)

Well, I use Linux on a PPC machine.  Debian has ports for the
following architectures: m68k, sparc, alpha, arm, mips (and little
endian mips), hppa, ia64 and as Dave mentions, s390.  Oops, almost
forgot - the 'sh' architecture too.  J2ME most likely runs on some of
the embedded ones, but that's a fairly limited platform compared to
'regular' Java.

And that's just Linux.  One might also consider using other systems
such as one of the BSD's, or something else even less widely used.

In reality, Java (*) does work on my computer, but not the Java (TM)
Technology from Sun.

I use GNU gcj to compile the code (the "blackdown" folks also had
something, but I'm not sure it's current).  I don't suspect it would
be difficult in the slightest to make Sun's Java run on all the
platforms Linux runs on, however I don't know if it's legal to do that
porting yourself.  Or if it is, you most likely can't share the
results with your friends.  In any case, what is available on that
site does not run on my machine.

Ciao,
-- 
David N. Welton
Personal:                   http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Apache Tcl:                 http://tcl.apache.org/
Free Software:              http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
Linux Incompatibility List: http://www.leenooks.com/

(*) Or whatever the heck we're allowed to call it - to download Java,
err, I mean the Java SDK, you must agree to the following terms:

http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/

including always using Sun trademarks as adjectives.  For example
( http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/examples/ex1.html ):

WRONG
"My business relies on Java"
RIGHT
"My business relies on the Javaplatform"

RMS seems a bit insistent about "GNU/Linux" at times, but... this is a
bit over the top!