Not a bash, just the facts

[Derek Broughton]

Karl Auer wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 14:12 +0100, Loïc Martin wrote:
>> > I think I must be having visions or we're talking about to different
>> > things. For me, installing Sun's has always been faster on Ubuntu than
>> > on Windows : open Synaptic, do a search for "java" (name and
>> > description) then install j2re1.4 and the j2re that also has in the
>> > name "mozilla-plugin". Then just accept the license agreement that pops
>> > up.
>> 
>> Does that really work?  Why do the wiki instructions include so many
>> terminal commands then?   (I'm not doubting you, just wondering why the
>> RestrictedFormats wiki page doens't just explain it as clearly as you
>> just did?)
> 
> Doesn't Synaptic install a non-Sun Java? I'm pretty sure it does.

Synaptic points at whatever you want.  I have sun-j2sdk1.5.  It says:

Maintainer: Ubuntu Backports Project <ubuntu-bp-devel at googlegroups.com>

So it _is_ built for ubuntu, but I can't figure out where I got it.  Maybe
breezy-backports?  Wherever it was, it isn't in my sources now.

> To Get 
> Sun's you have to go through the "get it, package-ize it, install it"
> process with a download from Sun, and that's what the WiKi describes in
> such detail.

You don't _have_ to.
> 
> The Ubuntu default one doesn't work in all cases - I couldn't get
> Eclipse to start properly, for example. After I installed the Sun one
> everything worked perfectly. Which could have been a fault in Eclipse,
> relying on some oddity in the Sun JVM, but the effect was the same.

Afaik, _nobody_ but Sun has a JDK for 1.5, and I wouldn't be at all
surprised if Eclipse is counting on the major improvements in that version.
-- 
derek