Slashdot Mirror

Actually, yeah, that's exactly it:

-Go to Blackdown's site.
-Click on "OK" when the window pops up asking if you want to get the plugin (it's the standard plugin download dialog box).
-It will (should?) take you to a page where you can download the Java plugin.

If you want to do things the slightly harder way (like I did a week ago; I jumped the gun:), you can go to Blackdown, click on Download, pick a mirror, go into JDK-1.3.0/i386/rc1 and grab j2re-1.3.0-RC1-linux-i386.tar.bz2. Then you can install the Java runtime yourself; it includes the plugin.

Of course, if you just want to get to the tarball with no searching, you can just click her e.

Have fun! I am!
-------------

Actually, yeah, that's exactly it:

-Go to Blackdown's site.
-Click on "OK" when the window pops up asking if you want to get the plugin (it's the standard plugin download dialog box).
-It will (should?) take you to a page where you can download the Java plugin.

If you want to do things the slightly harder way (like I did a week ago; I jumped the gun:), you can go to Blackdown, click on Download, pick a mirror, go into JDK-1.3.0/i386/rc1 and grab j2re-1.3.0-RC1-linux-i386.tar.bz2. Then you can install the Java runtime yourself; it includes the plugin.

Of course, if you just want to get to the tarball with no searching, you can just click her e.

Have fun! I am!
-------------

Actually, yeah, that's exactly it:

-Go to Blackdown's site.
-Click on "OK" when the window pops up asking if you want to get the plugin (it's the standard plugin download dialog box).
-It will (should?) take you to a page where you can download the Java plugin.

If you want to do things the slightly harder way (like I did a week ago; I jumped the gun:), you can go to Blackdown, click on Download, pick a mirror, go into JDK-1.3.0/i386/rc1 and grab j2re-1.3.0-RC1-linux-i386.tar.bz2. Then you can install the Java runtime yourself; it includes the plugin.

Of course, if you just want to get to the tarball with no searching, you can just click her e.

Have fun! I am!
-------------

I find it hard to belive that Java is really faster on linux than it is on just about any other platform. At least Java 2 anyway. Do they have native threads yet? Blackdown changed their status page. Where's the checklist page? If they do use native threads I guess they don't use ptreads. If they did each thread would appear as a separeate LWP. Imagine running a Java proggie that had 300 threads and then looking at top and finding 300 6MB processes(linux threads reports same total memory usage of all threads for each individual thread). Although I have never done any benchmarks my feeling through expirience is that its just a little slower due to particular memory usages and other stuff I have heard. But maybe they sorted some of that stuff out. Great to hear if it's true. I wouldn't develop on anything else even if it where half the speed.

KidSock

Proabily a troll (or, at least, someone who's greatly misinformed) but...

No, HTML mail will not do this, the exploit uses a specially written java applet to take advantage of a hole in netscape's java implemtation.

You should be running a firewall, anyways. Basicly, unless you're running servers that you want to be accessable over the internet, you should have your firewall set up to block inbound connections (that is, connections from the internet to your network) with the exception of connections that you need to be open for something to work.

If you're concerned about this exploit, you may want to turn off java in netscape untill they release a fix. Netscape's java implementation is quite buggy, anyways, if you want or need java in netscape, look at the java plugin aviabile at The Blackdown Project.

As a precaution, you may also want to turn off javascript in mail and news, but keep in mind that javascript is not the same thing as java, the two are entirly diffrent.

I read the BrownOffice Site but it didn't say if it was all cross platformed. Does it effect every version? Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc? or just what it seems to be is the Linux implementation...

and does this mean it's resident in Mozilla too?

Juergen

I don't know the exact details, but it's basically that any implementation of Swing made after even looking at Sun's documentation falls under Sun's licensing restrictions. According to those rules, there is no such thing as a "clean-room implementation".

Juergen, Blackdown Java-Linux

The article states that Java 3D for linux is forthcoming, implying that it is not available yet. It is (not a production release, though), and I've been using it for about a couple weeks now, and its very stable and clean, and other than my machine being horrendously outdated, it performs well. See the blackdown.org site for more information.


--
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"

Hello. &nbsp.If you are looking for Java support for Mozilla, visit this page.

You can also check out the Mozilla home page for additional information and the rationale for the decision to only specify a Java interface for Mozilla.

--

The Java plugin has been available for a little while. However, many websites still use the <applet> tag instead of the
<EMBED
type=application/x-java-applet;version=1.1
java_docbase=file:///none
width=123 height=123
code=whatever.class>
Use Javascript to probe for the plugin, if it exists then print the embed tag, otherwise print the applet tag.
You can get the plugin here or off of http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/mirrors.html

I passed mine through bash, worked fine. Seems to work with sh, too... Doesn't look like it works with *my* setup of csh or tcsh...

Hmm... you're using JavaPlugIn_1.2.2.px.sh, right? Thats the netscape plugin- I don't have any experience with the other ones, I installed the jvm1.2.2 from java.sun.com. Also, I believe this is for glibc, if you're still running libc5 it won't work, but I'd think it'd still install... You might want to look around the Blackdown website, too-- they might have some relevant documentation.

The sun is going down, I say we follow it out of town- We've been here for far too long.

Juergen

I will take this opportunity to remind all fellow Daemons to register with Sun's Java Developer Connection and vote for the Java 2 SDK port to FreeBSD!

While there has been an official Linux port, there is no native Java 2 SDK for FreeBSD. Please, all members of JDC, go here and cast your votes to have Sun release this software. We are up to 2766 votes so far. It took 4551 votes before Sun released the Linux version, so we're almost there, right? ;-)

(However, I am well aware that the release of the Linux port was due in large part to the excellent folks from Blackdown.)

Here are a few of the tons of comments on the "bug report" page where you can vote for this RFE (request for enhancement).

• "FreeBSD is one of the favorite OS to run servers, and Java is becoming the favorite language to write server applications."
• "Daemon News supports this project. DN will also issue a certification if it runs well on BSD."
• "Due to the stability we use either Solaris or FreeBSD. It is very tiresome not being able to develop on FreeBSD for deployment on Solaris. Using solely Linux is not an option for me."
• "It's a pity that we can't develop on a OS that is very popular among small ISPs."
• "As has been said, not having Java ports for these platforms helps only Microsoft, and hurts the people Sun really seems interested in helping: the Open Source community."
• "With official support of Java2 on FreeBSD from SUN, I would be able to finally abandon NT platform and use my prefferd FreeBSD OS for most of my projects."

You must be registered in the JDC (Java Developer Connection) to vote. Registration is free and quick, so if you're a Java developer or just have a general interest on FreeBSD or Java, please go sign up and vote!

This is a repost from today's other Java discussion. Please read and go vote!

While there has been an official Linux port, there is no native Java 2 SDK for FreeBSD. Please, all members of JDC, go here and cast your votes to have Sun release this software. We are up to 2703 votes so far. It took 4551 votes before Sun released the Linux version, so we're almost there, right? ;-)

(However, I am well aware that the release of the Linux port was due in large part to the excellent folks from Blackdown.)

Here are a few of the tons of comments on the "bug report" page where you can vote for this RFE (request for enhancement).

• "FreeBSD is one of the favorite OS to run servers, and Java is becoming the favorite language to write server applications."
• "Daemon News supports this project. DN will also issue a certification if it runs well on BSD."
• "Due to the stability we use either Solaris or FreeBSD. It is very tiresome not being able to develop on FreeBSD for deployment on Solaris. Using solely Linux is not an option for me."
• "It's a pity that we can't develop on a OS that is very popular among small ISPs."
• "As has been said, not having Java ports for these platforms helps only Microsoft, and hurts the people Sun really seems interested in helping: the Open Source community."
• "With official support of Java2 on FreeBSD from SUN, I would be able to finally abandon NT platform and use my prefferd FreeBSD OS for most of my projects."

You must be registered in the JDC (Java Developer Connection) to vote. Registration is free and quick, so if you're a Java developer or just have a general interest on FreeBSD or Java, please go sign up and vote!

Anyone interested in doing an unofficial port please mail me at javadrew@spammerslovehotmail.com (obviously remove the "spammerslove" :-).

Please, all members of JDC, go here and cast your votes to have Sun release this software. We are up to 2703 votes so far. It took 4551 votes before Sun released the Linux version, so we're almost there, right? ;-)

(However, I am well aware that the release of the Linux port was due in large part to the excellent folks from Blackdown.)

You must be registered in the JDC (Java Developer Connection) to vote. Registration is free and quick, so if you're a Java developer or just have a general interest on FreeBSD or Java, please go sign up and vote!

Anyone interested in doing an unofficial port please mail me at javadrew@spammerslovehotmail.com (obviously remove the "spammerslove" :-).

Viva Java 2 en FreeBSD!

Alright, while I think this would be Really Cool (TM) and all, I think we have to remember who we are dealing with here. The company which has recently proven it has more faces then a pair of dice: Sun Microsystems.

These are the people who let the Blackdown Java porting effort do all the work, and then took it all from them with no credit.

These are the people who have said several times (here, here, and as far back as here) that Solaris isn't just going to be free, but Open Source.

These are the people who pushed Java as an open standard, and then -- once many companies had tied their future to it -- pulled out of the standards process. Then, when others suggested going forward with a Java standard without Sun, claimed that their own public documentation was not complete enough for anyone to do that.

So, when they say Solaris is going to be "free", I have to say: "Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you. It's in Brooklyn. Great view of the water."

I think Sun's products are pretty good (they're certainly a hell of a lot better then Micros~1) and that Java still has a lot of promise, but I'm still not gonna trust Sun any further then I can throw an E10K.

Finally an article on the server-side successes of Java. IMHO, Java servlets are the best thing that has happened to Java since its inception, but for reasons completely unknown to me, Java-bashing has taken its place next to Microsoft bashing as an official Slashdot sport. Perhaps the reason is the early failure of Java when Sun touted it as the single platform that will replace everything. Anybody else remember the Java ring and the Java OS?

Dear fellow Java-basher Slashdotters: I know most of you have very little free time on your hands, but please set aside a couple of days to take a look at this exciting server side technology, Java servlets. It is truly write-once, run anywhere; it's a widely accepted industry standard, almost all popular databases and application servers support it, and Java is a very good OO language after all. Take a look at some nice servlet tutorials or better, O'Reilly's servlets book, download the awesome Tomcat or Apache JServ to run with your Apache Web server, get the latest JDK from Blackdown or even better, IBM's JDK, add Jikes for good measure, and explore the beautiful world of Java servlets. Sun's site completely relies on Java servlets, Yahoo uses servlets for some portions of the site, a host of smaller Web sites and e-commerce companies completely rely on servlets and/or JSP (which is based on servlet technology), (epinions.com, mercata.com come to my mind; there are lots of others)

Whatever server-side programming technology you're using, you will like servlets. Most likely you will want to forget about CGI.pm, sell your books about Netscape's proprietary server-side JavaScript on Ebay, erase memories of hours of fiddling with ISAPI/NSAPI extensions, shred your printouts of ASP error message explanations from the Microsoft knowledge base, and lament about the time you spent posting aimlessly on every bulletin board about those pesky, undocumented Oracle functions of PHP. You will easily have time for all these when you start to use servlets.


--

BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.

Well, partly because they've given their source code to the Blackdown group who is doing a great job. If you don't like their port, you can always use IBM's.

I'll tell you why - they aren't interested in seeing the language shine on [Linux et al].

That's funny. They're hiring Linux developers.

OO ... is not a productivity enhancing technology.

Any technology can suck if you implement it badly. Done right, OO is extremely productive. Don't blame OO because you can't get it right.

I realize that as a Slashdot reader, this information may be new to you. Maybe you should check other sources before spewing such ignorant crap.

See the platform page of the Kaffe Java Virtual Machine. They ported it to about anything... But it's only a 1.1 compliant VM.

The Blackdown ports overview can be found here. But AFAIK they're Linux only (although on several platforms). They have a pre-1.2 JDK which runs pretty well.

It seems they're making progress - see the status page, updated on Oct 30.

But you're right, I'd also like to know how Sun's support of a Linux JDK might look a year after they announced it...

Actually Blackdown released a new version of their 1.2.2 JDK port that they say is in good shape EXCEPT on SMP machines. However take a look at the status page.

Maybe you'd like to test the preview of Borland's Linux version of JBuilder 3, it's available here.

BTW, the Blackdown folks also seem to make progress with their Linux 1.2.2 JDK, see the updated status page.

Our needs included:

portability - the application must be able to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux (if we get other *nixes as a bonus then that's even better)

consistency - the interface must be as consistent as possible across platforms

gui flexibility - the interface must be as customizable as possible

html/XML support - the language or its libraries/runtime must support HTML content, and at least be pledging future support for XML.

After doing our research, and delving into Sun's commitment to Linux, as well as its seeming support for Open Source we decided that Java was likely our best choice. The Swing components seemed to provide the desired customizability and consistency, Java supported HTML and was on its way to XML support, and the Linux support promised would guarantee us a presence on what we deemed the important platforms.

So now it's a year later. The product is designed, mostly written, and really beginning to take shape. We are trying to put together our package to show to potential underwriters but have been plagued by a serious Java issue:

The Windows and Solaris JDK/JRE packages, while still a bit slow and memory-intensive, provide most of the features we need to produce a stable and slick application which can usefully present our content. What bugs there are appear to be hot items ready for fixing in the next release. However, the Linux JDK/JRE packages are not stable, not well-supported, and not even at the same release level as the Windows and Solaris versions.

Month after month we have watched the progress of JDK development (as supposedly supported by Sun) for Linux crawl forward. We have been programming steadily, working around bugs, redesigning interface features to not rely upon features which are not yet present in Linux. Generally acting as if Java2 for Linux is not coming any time soon.

As we watch we have gotten the feeling that, despite press releases to the contrary, Sun could care less whether the Linux JDK ever gets finished, and doesn't appear to be devoting its resources at all towards the platform. Indeed, it seems as if they would prefer people forgot about Linux and its Java port altogether. Here's an example. java.sun.com is Sun's main website devoted to the Java language. Trying to actually find the Linux port from this page takes the patience of Job. Want some help? I'll locate you a few pages down in the right direction. See if you can find it from here. It doesn't help matters that Sun "reorganizes" their Java site periodically, essentially scrambling the links on the page -- reminiscent of the supermarket technique of seemingly random placement of necessities to make one wander through the store, hopefully buying non-necessities (or, similarly, the legendary placement of keys on the QWERTY keyboard to slow down the typist).

"Bad site design" aside, after looking in more desperation for help we noticed other symptoms of "Sun support gone wrong.":

Cryptic messages on Sun's message board about the availabili ty of Linux Java tools

Rumblings on the Blackdown Java port mailing list about lack of progress, with occasional hints that Blackdown is fixing bugs in Sun's code which are getting folded in for later release. While that's great (they should report bugs and the bugs should be fixed in later releases), this forces us to ask the question, "What form is the press-released 'Sun support' taking?" Evidently it's not in the form of programming resources or even $ to support developers.

Additionally, Blackdown appears to be in the lead as far as releases of the JDK go, with IBM purportedly not close to a Java2 JDK, and the other viable options being "for profit" and likely Closed Source. So, this is the net effect of Sun's much publicised "support for Java on Linux"?

This interview, to me, gives me additional reason to doubt Sun's corporate motives. While there are (even discussed on the Linux/Java developers lists) difficulties in porting Solaris thread code to Linux, and difficulties testing graphical components under the numerous X environments available to the Linux end user, if Sun were truly "supporting" the port of Java to Linux this would not really be an issue. Sun could at least provide a more portable reference implementation if nothing else. Gosling is as aware of this as anyone, but uses this as his "out" ("Sun FUD" if you will).

Similarly he straddles the fence by parroting the Sun party line -- why not truly Open Source Java (e.g., GPL it or release it under one of the BSD licenses?)? Well, it really is Open Source, but we have our own proprietary license because we want to maintain platform independence. But, ironically, the fact that Java is not truly Open Source is one of the reasons (determined from hours of sifting through user and developer mailing lists) why it isn't being ported more quickly to Linux. So, the Sun license is guaranteeing (at least for the moment) that Java is NOT platform independent.

Take this together with some reconsideration of the recent StarOffice purchase, and one begins to wonder whether Linux support is, in Sun's eyes, great PR but bad business.

(Note, though, that "competing" VMs on Win32 are strangely absent, including Microsoft's fast and well-patched one based on 1.1.4, IBM's etc.)

This message, although very clear and insightful, carries on a blatantly false statement : "Java is weakly supported under Linux"

I am currently using my Linux Boxes (RH 5.2 & Mandrake 6.0) to develop Java 1.2software.

Yes, I use the 1.2 version, from Blackdown, ported to Linux thanks to Sun's "more-open-than-close-software" policy.

And it runs fine ! AWT, Swing, whatever you want, it's there and working, and just as fast as with Win98 versions.

The only problem is, it's hard to resist the temptation to write my programs with vi, which makes my co-workers think I'm some highly dangerous kind of psycho... :o)


Thomas Miconi,
Karma Police Foreign Dept.
"Enforcing peace of mind by all possible means"

Now how about explaining why they're all false?

1. NO back compatibility for a.out binaries

Oh really. I suppose that's why the kernel has a "Support for a.out binaries" option in it.

Plus, Slackware at least has the entire a.out compatibility libraries with it. I'm sure there are others.

Frankly, I don't see why this point is relevant at all, since Solaris is ELF, the BSDs i believe are using or moving to ELF, etc...

2. No international support

And that's why X has Japanese and Cyrillic(sp? Russian) fonts. Plus you can use all those nice ISO-4digits-moredigits fonts to get all those funny little accented letters, should you need them.

Oh, wait, they meant the OS has to understand Unicode. Just more "Our way or the highway" thinking.

3. Poor support for Java

http://www.blackdown.org. Nuff said, except Sun themselves have endorsed them.

4. MORE PRONE TO SECURITY BREACHES

Actually, that would be "less" since security breaches are fixed instantly (more or less) by the sheer number of coders out there. This is in contrast to Microsoft's model where it takes forever (in Internet terms) to get a fix.

Yep, you know what come next after "They fight you..."

Posted by kenmcneil:

Currently a discussion similar to this, about the implications of Sun's death grip on Java, has begun on the java-linux mailing list. You can find more information about the list here. I encourage anyone who wishes to discuss this further to contribute. A good place to start is with the original post which was titled "Sun Bashing 2" ("Sun Bashing" was about Sun's lack of enthusiasm over Linx) and was posted by myself, kenmcneil@hotmail.com.

From the status page:

Most people already know why, but in case you don't: the source licensing agreement that the Blackdown Team has with Sun says that we cannot release our ports, even in pre-release testing form, without passing the JCK. So, even though our port has been running quite well since November, we can't release it because there are some JCK tests that it doesn't yet pass.

So what's this? Does this mean that this build does pass all the compatibility tests (sounds like it has to, or they couldn't release it at all), but does not run stably (you'd think general stability would be among the criteria that Sun insists on)?

By the way, funny story: two days ago, a friend asked me about Java 2 for Linux. I hunted around a little and pointed him to blackdown.org, which had 1.1.8 available, and 1.2 "Real Soon Now". Then yesterday at Linux World, I saw that the Sun booth had "Java 2 SDK for Linux" signs up, so I asked the guy about it. He said that an hour earlier Steve Byrne had been there and showed him that the size of the file on his web page was increasing as it was being uploaded from his machine at home over a slow dial-up. Now this. So this is not the real release yet, but still, a lot of coincidences. For once, "Real Soon Now" really is soon.

David Gould

Well, I remember that some previous releases of 1.1.6 and 1.1.7 were available from Steve Byrne's home page directly (he's the main blackdown porter), so I went to blackdown.org/~sbb, and lo and behold, there it was. :-) It didn't appear to have been linked to the main blackdown page yet.

And don't forget to check out the classpath project, which stands a better chance of getting Java2 features to linux in a reasonable timeframe.