BYTE.com > Tangled in the Threads > 2000 > February
Freedom, Control, & Java
By Jon Udell
February 9, 2000
(Freedom, Control, & Java
: Page 1 of 3 )
A while back, Jari Mýkelý noted:
Java is hugely popular, but we are far from the "any platform" slogans of early Java days. There are production versions only for Wintel and Solaris, and betas for Linux and AIX.
It's certainly an odd situation. "Write once, run anywhere" has devolved into, as one newsgroup wag put it, "write once, debug everywhere."
For Linux users in particular, it's been a long and frustrating wait for a mature and current JDK to appear on their chosen platform. Until recently, the choice was between JDK ports from Blackdown and IBM, neither of which was current with Sun's Java 2. When I faced this choice a while back, I tried Blackdown's JDK 1.1.7 (vs. IBM's JDK 1.1.8) more or less at random; it was far from clear what to expect in either case.
More recently, a beta version of JDK 1.2.2 for Linux has been available from the Blackdown site.
According to Thomas Lockney:
I've worked with both. The Blackdown/Sun code is more up to date (very cool if you want to use any of the new features of Java2), but the IBM code performs a bit better. There are even some kernel tweaks available to help improve performance even more (see "Java, threads, and scheduling in Linux" (Jan 2000)). I'm
more inclined to stick with the Blackdown work. For some reason, I've had better success getting certain products to work under it (including Allaire's JRun).
But isn't the situation changing now? This week, another correspondent pointed out Java 2 for Linux is (nearly) available from Sun. Doesn't this indicate Sun is now fully behind Java for Linux?
Bjýrn Borud:
No, it does not imply the product has superior, or even acceptable, quality. Merely because Sun created the Java programming environment doesn't mean it is the best implementor.<>
BYTE.com > Tangled in the Threads > 2000 > February
|
