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Native Java JDK 1.3.1 Support For FreeBSD
ap writes "Justin T. Gibbs, of the FreeBSD Foundation, announced today the availability of a native binary release of the Java JDK 1.3.1 for FreeBSD. He also mentioned that more attention will now be focused on providing a release of the 1.4.x JDK. Such developments should allow for FreeBSD to be better suited for enterprise uses."
but "binary only" probably means "x86-32 binary based upon libs from FreeBSD 3.1"
I'm still waiting for a PowerPC(G3/750cx) build of J2DK 1.4.1. Sun won't offer it, blackdown won't offer it, and IBM's build just promptly segaults when run.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
For those of you wondering wtf he's talking about, a cute chick in red plastic dressed as the BSD devil got lauded at some convention somewhere.
Here's the link to the post, lots of pictures.
FreeBSD (actually, AFAIK, all the BSDs) have had native Java for ages as part of the ports system, but because of Sun's licencing, you had to compile it yourself, which can take some time. A binary release just makes it easier for some users to run native Java.
FreeBSD (and probable other BSDs) can also run an emulated Linux Java virtual machine.
Mark
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Does anyone run this OS?
Yes. Yahoo! uses FreeBSD for all of its shared hosting. Other hosting businesses such as Verio, Infospace and Datasync also have very large deployments of FreeBSD (each of the hosts I named have over 100,000 active sites running on FreeBSD).
The information in this post came from here.
Maybe partying will help...
MacOSX may have used BSD code, but they are very different operating systems.
And one step below the 100k threshold lies my favorite host of choice, Pair Networks. And take a look at what the longest running sites are using.
Oh, you meant technical reasons? Java works fine on BSD, and has for a long time. We are talking about licensing issues here.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Somewhat OT, but it really impressed me today when I went to the Nvidia site and clicked "Download Drivers" --> "Graphics Driver" --> "Geforce and TNT"
And saw listed for choices:
Windows XP / 2000
Windows NT4
Windows 95 / 98 / ME
Linux IA32
Linux AMD64
Linux IA64
FreeBSD
I don't know whether Nvidia's support is new (it probably isn't) but this is the first time I noticed it listed.
I was like: "Wow, people actually use this OS enough that a major graphics company provides drivers on their main download page."
Sorry if this isn't news, I just thought it was cool.
The unofficial
Wow... What an impressively short-sighted and misinformed opinion. Lemme guess, you're a linux user?
The latest Netcraft survey indicates that the top 5 sites (whatever that means) on the Net run FreeBSD. Now, whether you believe how they indicated top 5 or not, sites like yahoo.com are huge and the fact that they run FreeBSD says a lot.
The BSD's are alive and kicking, esp when you care about size and performance. I can run a Linux Moz binary on a FreeBSD 4.8 box faster than on a RedHat 9 box on the same hardware. Say what you will, but BSD's are a great fit for a number of uses.
I'm down with that, as it were
(Every time I post this sort of message, I get +5. I hate karma whoring like this, but once again it's time for some education.) "Amazon is hiring Perl programmers" leads the reader to believe that Amazon is running Perl in some major shape or form. They aren't. They are running Java servlets under... Weblogic, I believe. "Slashdot...runs on Perl." leads the reader to believe that Slashdot is a complicated website. It isn't. Incidentally, have you clicked on the "Friends" tab on your user page lately? What an incredibly slow response (and that isn't a bandwidth issue). None of the technologies you listed (mod_perl, Python, PHP, etc) handle any type of failure well at all. Show me a PHP-based site, hosted on multiple machines, that provides load-balanced and automatic failover of in-memory session data. I'll give you a clue: you won't find one, because it is impossible to do shared memory over a cluster of machines in PHP, mod_perl, Python, etc etc. On the other hand, I can list off a whole slew of Java app servers that can do clustered, load-balanced, full-failover shared memory without even blinking. Resin is an awesome example of an extremely inexpensive application server that currently does nearly everything you need an app server to do. Want to know a little secret? The PHP team is moving more towards an application-server architecture, because they know that the native compiled-in mod to Apache/iPlanet/etc is kludgy. They're cooperating with Sun and others on JSF so PHP will be able to speak with Java applications in a more efficient way. mod_perl I won't even bother with. The MVC model simply won't work under mod_perl. Good luck with an implementation team of more than, say, 5 people.
Just to be clear, this does not work on newer versions of FreeBSD only 4.8.
If you have 5.0 or more reccent, your are SOL.
The java/jdk13 port was added to FreeBSD on Aug 27, 2001 -- according to CVS.
Now, _two_ years later, there is an _officially licensed_ binary package available. All "serious developers" could, and many did consider FreeBSD quite suitable for years... But it takes a lot of effort to get an official license to distribute the binaries. And not just the coding effort, which would be the FreeBSD people's idea of fun. It is mostly the legalese and paperwork kind of effort, which most sane people hate...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At the contrary, it is a perfect opportunity.
They're just granting the license for FreeBSD, nothing else. Now the other JDKs will come in very quickly and in no time, FreeBSD will be an "official" Java platform.
It doesn't mean anything technically, since all JDKs are supported natively for a long time, btu in terms of marketting, it is a major step.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I think you are all wrong.
Reminds me of the town fool. Everyone knows your a fool, but when you open your mouth you simultaniously remove any doubt.
BSD* has no java port.
Yes it does.
BSD* does no run an emulated Linux Java virtual machine. Instead it run it as a normal process
and maps Linux calls to simular BSD calls.
FreeBSD has a linux emulation layer, for running linux applications, and so the linux apps think they are talking to a linux kernel and userland. FreeBSD can, and many people do, run the linux JDK under emulation. In fact, to compile the native version of JDK on FreeBSD you have to boot-strap it with the linux version (java requires java to install). Afterwards folks can use the native version to build the native BSD version again. BTW - the process of mapping linux syscalls to their BSD counter part is called emulation.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
I'm glad to see that Sun is allowing Sun Java to be released for FreeBSD. Hopefully 1.4.2 will be released sooner or later. There are, however, some other alternatives. Kaffe (www.kaffe.org) is a project to make a free JVM. They are making slow but steady progress on that. Also, gcj is both a compiler and a JVM. Hopefully there will soon be some viable non-Sun Java alternatives.
Considering Macintosh OS 9.X doesn't even support Java 1.2 yet (they are working on it), I think FreeBSD are doing okay.
:)
The sources have been there a long time - it's just a rubber stamp approving a precompiled version. Besides which, what BSD user out there really cares about having to compile source files themselves? It's as easy as typing in "make"
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Yes, you can install it through ports (and compiling it) or by downloading a precompiled package.
Both the JDK 1.3 and 1.4 ports feature the HotSpot virtual machine which requires native threads. So the answer to your question is YES.
However, native threads do not work for the Java plugin in Mozilla yet.
Sebastian
http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64.html