Update for Java?

[Liam Proven]

On 19 December 2013 12:27, Paul Cartwright <pbcartwright at gmail.com> wrote:
> between OpenJDK and java???


That's like asking 'what is the difference between "banana" and "fruit"?'

Java is a programming language. Java programs run in an environment
called a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). You need a JVM to run Java apps.
If you want to run Java applets inside web pages, then you also need a
plugin in your web browser to enable it to call the JVM and display
applets.

If you do have a JVM but don't have the plugin, you can run Java apps
from the commandline but not in Web pages.

There are 2 widely-available JVMs for Linux.

Oracle bought Sun. Sun developed Java. The "official", partly
closed-source JVM is Oracle's but it's also called the Sun JVM. It is
not in the Ubuntu repos because it is not FOSS. You need to download
it from Oracle. There is a PPA to do this automatically.

There is also a FOSS one, part of the Open Java Development Kit. It's
called IcedTea (Iced tea being a kind of caffeinated beverage; Java is
a kind of coffee.) IcedTea *is* in the Ubuntu repositories. There are
2 versions: 1.6, which implements Java 6, and 1.7, which implements
the newer Java 7. (Note, Sun had a nasty marketing move to make code
look more mature by ignoring the first digit of the release number -
so Java 1.6 was marketed as "Java 6" for example.)

Not all Java apps target Java 7 yet so some may require v1.6 but for
new installations v6 is old, deprecated and going out of support, so
go with 1.7.

IcedTea is the OpenJDK runtime. Sun/Oracle JVM is the closed-source one.

To run applets in webpages, you also need the plugin, which is called
something like icedtea-6-plugin or icedtea-7-plugin. Install that and
it pulls in the rest of the JVM with it.

Most things run perfectly well on both, but there are some proprietary
apps and so on that only work correctly with the "official" Oracle/Sun
JVM, such as the Eldy simplified UI for seniors and my own company,
Simplicity Computers, "Envelope" UI.


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