[CLUE-Tech] Java and Debian

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Matt Gushee (mgushee at havenrock.com) wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 09:52:27PM -0600, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> > 
> > I recently upgraded my wife's machine on Debian testing.  Java was
> > working before (she needs it for Metro's web page, and she is seriously
> > addicted to those java applet games on www.popcap.com, so if I don't get
> > it working I am in biiiiig trouble :-).
> > 
> > After the upgrade, Java has failed, it no longer seems to realize I have
> > a plugin. So I reinstall java fron Sun, desperately, and re-copy the
> > plugin that comes with the download from sun. No help.
> > 
> > My question is, do any fellow Debian users have a painless way of
> > getting java to work in Debian?  Since the java support is truly
> > bad in Debian,
> 
> I don't think this is a Debian-specific issue. My understanding is that
> Sun's license for the Java2 platform:
> 
>   a) does not qualify as a free software license; and
>   
>   b) effectively prohibits redistribution (well, presumably you can
>      pay some kind of hefty license fee for redistribution rights, but
>      that wouldn't work very well for a community-based Linux distro).
> 
> Meanwhile, since Sun started releasing Java for Linux, the motivation to
> develop an alternate implementation was greatly reduced. I'm not sure
> whether it's even really happening any more.

I hadnn't really thought about this, but that makes perfect sense.  I
wondered why Debian's version of Blackdown just seemed to disappear.

I really would rather have a Debian package, and you can find them that
are wrappers around Sun's Java, downloading and Debianizing the version
from Sun, but as it turns out, the one's I found are not up to date
enough. I need 1.4.2 (see below).

> My solution is that I simply don't install anything Java from Debian,
> ever. I just install the latest stable version from Sun. Maybe there's
> a better solution, but I haven't heard it.
> 
> The only qualification I'd add to that is that I don't care about
> applets; as a sometime Java developer, my main priority is to be able to
> run various current Java packages (server apps or GUI, mainly). Applets
> are a somewhat different story: many applets are still written for Java
> 1.1.x, because that's the version supported by browser JVMs; Java2
> applets require a special plugin. So in your case, it could be a
> question of maintaining backwards compatibility (though I don't know why
> that would be a problem with the Debian packages). Do you happen to know
> which Java version your wife's Web sites use?
> 
> > I have to get it from Sun or IBM.  But then it is not a
> > part of the deb life-cycle, so it always breaks like this after a few
> > months.
> 
> I don't understand that. If you never install the Debian Java packages,
> only third-party ones, there's no reason why upgrading your distro
> should have any effect. Or is it because you try to install Debian's
> Java packages, when you already have another Java distribution
> installed?

One would think that nothing should break, huh? I don't have any Debian
Java stuff installed (I don't think there really is much, anymore). In
defense of Debian, I suspect at least once when something broke it was
my foul up, but not in this case.  It may have always been that I just
forgot how to set it up (Sun java, IBM java, Konq, Mozilla, all this
space months apart, I forget).

What happened here is that Debian Testing went to Mozilla 1.4, which is
compiled with gcc3.  I had a version of Java from Sun, and the plugin
was compiled with gcc2.  So it was binary-incompatible.  The latest Sun jre
does not seem to take care of this, but the latest Sun sdk *does* have a
a plugin specifically for NS/Mozilla for gcc3.

So it is working now (with 1.4.2 from Sun), after a lot of Google 
searching.  I was beginning to think I was mad, as I had read the Sun
install procdures about 5 times from 10 places, and done everything
therein, and getting nothing to work.

Tim
--
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silver_NO-UCE_klein.net   ==
== ------------------------------------------------ ==
== "Hello, World" 17 Errors, 31 Warnings...         ==
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