Java to Be Removed from Ubuntu, Uninstalled from User Machines

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Ubuntu users will be searching for an alternative for Sun-Java JDK in the near future due to the retirement of the license from Oracle. Canonical will soon be losing the right to distribute JDK on its systems.

Users who have the ‘sun-java-6′ package installed on their system will see it removed via a future software update – the exact date of which is ‘TBD’.
 
Ubuntu users will be searching for an alternative for Sun-Java JDK in the near future due to the retirement of the license from Oracle. Canonical will soon be losing the right to distribute JDK on its systems.

No they won't.

http://openjdk.java.net/
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html

OpenJDK is already in the repositories and is already under a GPLv2 license.

Consumer oriented distributions such a Mepis Linux switched from Sun-Java to OpenJDK a while ago. Outside of specific applications such as Spiral Knights OpenJDK works just fine for Java support.
 
No they won't.

http://openjdk.java.net/
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html

OpenJDK is already in the repositories and is already under a GPLv2 license.

Consumer oriented distributions such a Mepis Linux switched from Sun-Java to OpenJDK a while ago. Outside of specific applications such as Spiral Knights OpenJDK works just fine for Java support.

Umm, that doesn't contradict anything that the article states.

Of course OpenJDK is always an option.
 
Isn't it the philosophy of Ubuntu that you shouldn't have to? So yes you can, but the question is: who will?


and after all who is using Ubuntu? Mostly computer geeks. So , they have no problems to install Java manually :)
 
No, geeks stay away from Ubuntu. They know better.

:) Good answer. Though, I was wondering about Linux servers that uses Java for certain tasks like Web backend servers etc. Are those also affected by the news?
 
if u use the default repos, yes, it can be removed at a later day
but if u install the packages from Oracle/Sun, it adds their own repo to your sources list in which case, you should be fine.

and no...openjdk has issues (compatibility issues) that make it useful for me.
For one, openjdk's "java webstart" is not the same as the one by Oracle/Sun.
Many ipkvm devices use java webstart to launch.
Some don't work the same with OpenJDK but work perfectly fine with Sun JDK/JRE.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Oracle outdoing even Microsoft in the "Company most hostile to free and open source software" category? Given the way they've dealt with OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org, independent Java implementations (Google/Android), and now Java on open source platforms, it's almost as if their sole reason for acquiring Sun was to crap all over everything that made Sun relevant.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Oracle outdoing even Microsoft in the "Company most hostile to free and open source software" category? Given the way they've dealt with OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org, independent Java implementations (Google/Android), and now Java on open source platforms, it's almost as if their sole reason for acquiring Sun was to crap all over everything that made Sun relevant.

To me it seems like they're trying to do fewer things, and make money doing those things. They're not even remotely into it for the philosophical progress of computing.

"He who chases two rabbits, catches none" --Confucius
 
No they won't.

http://openjdk.java.net/
http://openjdk.java.net/legal/gplv2+ce.html

OpenJDK is already in the repositories and is already under a GPLv2 license.

Consumer oriented distributions such a Mepis Linux switched from Sun-Java to OpenJDK a while ago. Outside of specific applications such as Spiral Knights OpenJDK works just fine for Java support.

Like someone else said, that doesn't contradict anything the article states.

In other news, I noticed you popped up the very same way in the Windows 8 picture password thread with this same type of "ZOMG UR WRONG, LINUX IS PERFECT FOLKS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE!" bullshit.
 
Oracle by far worst ever, even before Microsoft. When we got their edict when Hurd the Turd became the new boss about all the old systems had to be upgraded or else. We gave Hurd the bird..:D
 
Oracle by far worst ever, even before Microsoft. When we got their edict when Hurd the Turd became the new boss about all the old systems had to be upgraded or else. We gave Hurd the bird..:D

Oracle are fucking evil sons of bitches.

Sun was an active participant in the open source community community and saw it as a boon to their business to keep open source flourishing.

Along comes fucking evil Oracle, buys Sun, and reverses all their long standing agreements on free and open software severely damaging many important projects relying on them.

IMHO, I wish death to Oracle.
 
They shoulda called it Molassass instead of Java...so you know what you're getting into :p
 
Maybe Ubuntu could figure out how to license C#.
That'd be one giant leap for mankind.
 
They shoulda called it Molassass instead of Java...so you know what you're getting into :p

Java is actually surprisingly fast these days, with all the runtime optimization that compiled code can not take advantage of.

I wouldn't use it for anything computationally intense, but for light software, it works perfectly fine, and is a hell of a lot less of a headache than C or any lower level language where you have to manage your memory and hardware addresses manually.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038164981 said:
Java is actually surprisingly fast these days, with all the runtime optimization that compiled code can not take advantage of.

I wouldn't use it for anything computationally intense, but for light software, it works perfectly fine, and is a hell of a lot less of a headache than C or any lower level language where you have to manage your memory and hardware addresses manually.

Check this out for further reading.

Essentially, hardware optimized C or C++ code will blow Java and C# out of the water every time, but it needs to be compiled in advance, and is usually not done so on the local machine, so when it is compiled it is not able to poll the machine with hardware queries and optimize the compilation. When optimization decisions are being made when this stuff is compiled, the code is usually compiled for a happy medium that runs reasonably well on all hardware. Java and C#'s virtual machines however load up specific local machine information on execution and optimize the shit out of the code which allow them to actually be surprisingly competitive in many operations.

In some cases with particularly hardware intensive code (like games), something similar is done with C code. For instance, back in the Pentium days it was not uncommon for games to come with two binaries, one optimized for MMX, and one optimized for systems without MMX. At launch the program would look for MMX and if present run the code optimized for it. This can give you a little bit of the best of both worlds - performance wise - but will still never optimize as well as Java can when it runs the VM tailored and optimized for your specific system.

So, for many types of software the Java VM almost makes up for its VM overhead by better runtime optimizations.

What's particularly cool about modern runtime environments is that in addition to optimizing for hardware, they can also optimize for state - for instance - if while running a Java program your one of your CPU cores becomes loaded, or you have less free RAM, it can - on the fly - change the optimization settings to a scheme better suited for fewer cores or less available RAM. A compiled C program can not do this.
 
Maybe Ubuntu could figure out how to license C#.
That'd be one giant leap for mankind.

It's called Mono and not only does it suffer from the same issues as everything else that foolishly tries to maintain compatibility with Microsoft tech (frequent breakage and rushes to add new features), but it's still in a legal gray area.

How much of an issue that later part is depends on who you ask. Personally, I don't see the point to adding any additional risk given how many good alternatives there are on Linux. Of course, I'm also not a fan of how heavy C# is either.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038165079 said:
What's particularly cool about modern runtime environments is that in addition to optimizing for hardware, they can also optimize for state - for instance - if while running a Java program your one of your CPU cores becomes loaded, or you have less free RAM, it can - on the fly - change the optimization settings to a scheme better suited for fewer cores or less available RAM. A compiled C program can no do this.

Even in C you can do whatever you want if you want to adapt dynamically. Most large commercial applications use their own memory manager anyway. With dynamic libraries you can pretty much load whatever version of the code you want on the fly, and also update it on the fly.

The managed environments may provide more in-built hooks for doing that with less developer time. Productivity is where their edge lies. But it is almost impossible to tune managed run-time environments the way you could tune C based code.

There was one specific incident I remember. This was on a code base of gazillions of lines of code and running a heuristic solver: Deleting about 50 lines of code (a function which was no being used) from the source code resulted in a 10% improvement in performance. Talk about cache size, cache line size and data locality affecting performance.
 
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