8 ms·

Sun-java6 packages removed soon from Debian/Ubuntu (and all other linux distros)

99 points by pythonist 15y ago

mattdeboard 15y ago
I am irked by the author's response to a commenter. To paraphrase: "Can't we just make an easy installer for Sun JDK?" "No, we're just going to take this opportunity to make our own open source project better." This sort of crap is why Linux is NOT ready for prime time.
- pythonist 15y ago
  I disagree with you. Making good free software improved GNU/Linux position (GCC, Linux kernel, Apache httpd, python and may other successful projects) instead just providing what vendor is shipping binary (drivers for graphic cards, Sun-Java...) All good free software projects would not exist if we ignore them and use proprietary software instead, and community could not have impact on features that are important.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    And you can never ignore the possibility of the proprietary software vendor deciding to make your life hard. With free software it's you, not them, who are in control. And that's what they fear the most.
    - ataggart 15y ago
      Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        Only when we squeeze it.
- fmw 15y ago
  Interesting conclusion. This is not like the Flash situation. Both JDK's are acceptable on a technical level. The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished. In other words: this doesn't really affect the kind of end-users that would be affected by a missing installer for Flash. Oracle is just creating a nuisance for system administrators and developers in a market that Linux is already dominating: servers. These users know how to install the Oracle packages outside of the package system and understand the licensing issue. The problem here is not GNU/Linux, but Oracle playing politics (again). The result is that they will continue to alienate developers, while their cash cow won't suffer in the short term (hackers aren't responsible for the majority of their business, business-type decision makers are). The decision to focus on an open alternative instead of working around Oracle's antics is what makes GNU/Linux what it is. GNU/Linux isn't just a practical piece of software, but also an idea. That being said, focussing developer time on the OpenJDK seems like a pragmatic move from a practical point of view as well, because licensing reasons are not something you can just ignore when convenient (without exposing your users to a possible lawsuit from Oracle).
  - sigzero 15y ago
    "The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished." And that is why it is the preferred one! For enterprise stuff you have to have the "more polished" one.
    - fmw 15y ago
      That is what I meant when I said that Oracle is mostly creating a nuisance for the server market. It forces sys admins and developers to jump through more hoops to get the software running on their servers (as well as to keep it updated in large deployments!). That is, those that really need it, because I'm sure some people will just switch to the OpenJDK instead, because it isn't unsuitable for production use either.
      - sylvestre 15y ago
        Please give me bug reports which shows that openjdk is not ready for production. I will be interested to report them upstream.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- sylvestre 15y ago
  As the author of this "crap", I am taking the opportunity to detail this position. If you are interested in such issues, you are probably aware that Oracle has made the openjdk-7 the base target development of the JVM. Proprietary versions (sun-java7 is you will) are based on the free version. This is the opposite of the current version (6). If we do not encourage users to switch to the Openjdk, bugs won't be fixed in the 6 or 7 for a while.
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    It just seems to me like reinvention of the wheel for its own sake. Why not just make it as easy on the user as possible by providing very easy installs for the most well-developed software, and for more experienced users, continue providing these open-source efforts? Seems like the same thought process at work that brought us cruft like the Unity UI in 11.04, then forced it on users as default, instead of just offering it as a new, less-stable alternative.
    - sylvestre 15y ago
      We are not reinventing anything. We are dropping a package which won't be supported anymore. More over, JDK/JRE 7 is already in the Debian archive and available.
- foolinator 15y ago
  Hate to tell you - it's already prime time in business, just not in consumerland. And that's only because it doesn't have MS Office/Photoshop.
fmw 15y ago
This will be a nuisance, because e.g. Clojure just works better with the Sun Java packages. The Sun packages don't just have performance improvements, but the Clojure devs seem to be actively targeting them. Even if this might lead to improvements to the OpenJDK in the long term it is one hell of a nuisance to have to go around the operating system package management scheme for Java. The lesson is to actively mistrust Oracle and invest more time in solutions that are independent from that company.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  For Ubuntu I expect someone will create a PPA for Sun Java. I don't know if there's anything similar for Redhat/Fedora/Cent but wherever it's possible, I expect that will be the workaround of choice.
  - sciurus 15y ago
    This won't happen because the license for future Oracle Java releases won't allow redistribution. http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      Someone will come along like sevenmachines and create a PPA with a "sun-java6-installer" to mirror the "flashplugin64-installer" that downloads the pack of binaries and installs them from Oracle's servers.
    - Jach 15y ago
      The way Gentoo handles this sort of thing (it does it with truecrypt) is keeping the ebuild and so forth around, but when it comes time to fetch the sources it will stop and tell you to go download the tar file from wherever it's usually at and stick it in the dist folder.
  - veeti 15y ago
    Sun/Oracle already provide RPM packages for Java.
yellowbkpk 15y ago
Java-related Ubuntu/Debian packages (eclipse, openjdk, maven, ant, etc.) have always been notoriously bad and slow to update. Installing sun-java6-jdk sure made things easier but I guess I'll have to learn how to do it by hand now, just like I do with all the other Java-related software I use on Ubuntu every day.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
  I think Eclipse is still on 3.3 or something in the main repo! The whole java thing's a bit of a mess from a 'casual user' perspective. Some packages won't work without the sun-java6 ones. Some appear to be optimised for it. There's at least one that I know of (but can't remember the name of at the mo - it's an IDE though) that refuses to install without them! My naïve self would have thought to try and reduce the reliance on java, but of course the cost (of any type) would outweigh any potential benefit.
  - din-9 15y ago
    http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keywords=eclipse http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keyword... shows Debian stable is on 3.5. That was still one version behind at the release of Squeeze, but saying 3.3 (two more years behind) is unfair. Experimental has 3.7 packages, so the situation seems to be improving.
  - smhinsey 15y ago
    You might be thinking of IntelliJ. It only works on the sun-java6 packages. Or at least that was the case last time I set it up.
    - andor 15y ago
      IntelliJ works just fine with OpenJDK.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
based2 15y ago
Will they do a librejava package ?
- rbanffy 15y ago
  It's called OpenJDK.
ak217 15y ago
The title is misleading. I don't see this changing anything for e.g. Gentoo.
budu3 15y ago
Oracle can't seem to see how they're destroying the Java ecosystem. I hope OpenJDK can keep it alive.
- 4ad 15y ago
  They're destroying the Java ecosystem for casual users and hobby developers, and they do it on purpose. It doesn't affect enterprises and enterprise software development. It's sad, very sad, but it's the way Oracle works. They're also destroying Solaris the same way.
bobf 15y ago
Check out fpm if you're concerned about packaging issues - https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm It makes it incredibly easy to create an rpm/deb/etc. from a directory, rpm, npm, gem, python module, etc. Here's a BayLISA video about it: http://vimeo.com/23940598 http://vimeo.com/23940598
- lamby 15y ago
  I'm sure fpm works in a lot of cases but something tells me that it's not straightforward to package a JVM..
  - mbreese 15y ago
    You can download an rpm, so it should just be a matter of conversion. At least the last time I did this, you downloaded a shell script that when you agreed to the license extracted an rpm from itself. So it should be a little more straightforward. Of course, when yoiu roll your own package, you don't get automatic security updates, so that's still a pain.
  - sciurus 15y ago
    Agreed. I spent some time updating the jpackage project's nosrc RPMs to work with newer versions of the JRE. There is a lot of complexity involved in making what Oracle's JRE installer delivers integrate nicely with the rest of the system.
- fungi 15y ago
  http://packages.debian.org/lenny/java-package http://packages.debian.org/lenny/java-package dosen't seem to be available in debian stable, but i see it in my ubuntu 10.04. last time i used it i needed to modify (couple of lines) to accommodate file name used by modern java versions. it works well as far as i can tell. openjdk is a far more sustainable solution but we needed sun java for some proprietary crap that refused to run on java or tomcat from the repos.
psadauskas 15y ago
I'm sure somewhere RMS is saying "I told you so."
- adbge 15y ago
  You must be careful, however, because not every Java platform is free. Sun continues distributing an executable Java platform which is nonfree, and other companies do so too. The free environment for Java is called IcedTea; the source code Sun freed is included in that. So that is the one you should use. Many GNU/Linux distributions come with IcedTea, but some include nonfree Java platforms. To reliably ensure your Java programs run fine in a free environment, you need to develop them using IcedTea. Theoretically the Java platforms should be compatible, but they are not compatible 100 percent. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
naner 15y ago
I often wondered if making the non-free stuff harder to use (Flash, Java, etc) will push free software devs to improve the free stuff. It might be good for Clojure and other Java projects to work towards having full control over their platform and distribution instead of having to rely on Oracle.
- riffraff 15y ago
  it could as well be that free software devs would have less motivation to improve the free stuff, since there is no competition. (In general, I don't think it has a big impact in either direction)
  - Peaker 15y ago
    It may cause some itches that were previously scratched by the non-free solution, though.
emilsedgh 15y ago
I wonder why Oracle changes that in the first place? Is it their attempt to compete with Red Hat on RHEL? Basically, this means enterprise users will have to move to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux. (Which, is ironically, based on RHEL)
mindstab 15y ago
People (including Ubuntu/Debian) seem to think that openJDK is just a bit slower and "less polished" but a fine drop in replacement. It has been my experience there is lot's of stuff it still just doesn't support. The saddest and most obvious was last time I was helping a first year comp sci student they couldn't even do lab #1 in it since openjdk didn't have the fancy new output writers. Sure you "don't need" them, and a bunch of other things it's missing, but those missing things quickly add up and start spelling lots of software that openJDK cannot run. And also first year comp sci students can't even use it for school. It is not a drop in replacement that is a bit slower, it is incomplete and I'm tired of people not understanding this. There are things it cannot do and software it cannot run.
- yesimahuman 15y ago
  Can you elaborate on the missing output writer support? I had a lot of software running with Lucene/Solr and my own code and never had an issue with OpenJDK.
riobard 15y ago
Does anyone have issues with Scala running on OpenJDK?
- copper 15y ago
  Well, it works for me (Arch64/OpenJDK), but then I haven't done much more than work partway through the scala tutorials.
scanr 15y ago
This is unfortunate. We'd consistently get hit by a 100% CPU NIO bug by OpenJDK on Ubuntu. OpenJDK also packages Rhino in the org.mozilla package which makes it painful to use a different version of Rhino. It's definitely not a drop in replacement.
g-garron 15y ago
From what I've read here: http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html "Linux users who prefer to use the thoroughly tested Oracle JDK 6 or Oracle JDK 7 binaries over OpenJDK builds packaged in their Linux distributions of choice can of course as usual simply get the gratis download at http://oracle.com/java http://oracle.com/java under the same terms as users on other platforms." So it seems only like a license change, is that true?
- sylvestre 15y ago
  Yes, it is "only" a license issue.
movingahead 15y ago
When I tested Hadoop, the documentation suggested Sun JDK. Even Android asks for the Sun JDK. http://developer.android.com/sdk/requirements.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/requirements.html I hope all these communities take active effort in supporting OpenJDK henceforth.

99 points by pythonist 15y ago

I am irked by the author's response to a commenter. To paraphrase: "Can't we just make an easy installer for Sun JDK?" "No, we're just going to take this opportunity to make our own open source project better." This sort of crap is why Linux is NOT ready for prime time.

pythonist 15y ago
I disagree with you. Making good free software improved GNU/Linux position (GCC, Linux kernel, Apache httpd, python and may other successful projects) instead just providing what vendor is shipping binary (drivers for graphic cards, Sun-Java...) All good free software projects would not exist if we ignore them and use proprietary software instead, and community could not have impact on features that are important.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  And you can never ignore the possibility of the proprietary software vendor deciding to make your life hard. With free software it's you, not them, who are in control. And that's what they fear the most.
  - ataggart 15y ago
    Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Only when we squeeze it.
fmw 15y ago
Interesting conclusion. This is not like the Flash situation. Both JDK's are acceptable on a technical level. The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished. In other words: this doesn't really affect the kind of end-users that would be affected by a missing installer for Flash. Oracle is just creating a nuisance for system administrators and developers in a market that Linux is already dominating: servers. These users know how to install the Oracle packages outside of the package system and understand the licensing issue. The problem here is not GNU/Linux, but Oracle playing politics (again). The result is that they will continue to alienate developers, while their cash cow won't suffer in the short term (hackers aren't responsible for the majority of their business, business-type decision makers are). The decision to focus on an open alternative instead of working around Oracle's antics is what makes GNU/Linux what it is. GNU/Linux isn't just a practical piece of software, but also an idea. That being said, focussing developer time on the OpenJDK seems like a pragmatic move from a practical point of view as well, because licensing reasons are not something you can just ignore when convenient (without exposing your users to a possible lawsuit from Oracle).
- sigzero 15y ago
  "The Sun one is just a bit faster and more polished." And that is why it is the preferred one! For enterprise stuff you have to have the "more polished" one.
  - fmw 15y ago
    That is what I meant when I said that Oracle is mostly creating a nuisance for the server market. It forces sys admins and developers to jump through more hoops to get the software running on their servers (as well as to keep it updated in large deployments!). That is, those that really need it, because I'm sure some people will just switch to the OpenJDK instead, because it isn't unsuitable for production use either.
    - sylvestre 15y ago
      Please give me bug reports which shows that openjdk is not ready for production. I will be interested to report them upstream.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
sylvestre 15y ago
As the author of this "crap", I am taking the opportunity to detail this position. If you are interested in such issues, you are probably aware that Oracle has made the openjdk-7 the base target development of the JVM. Proprietary versions (sun-java7 is you will) are based on the free version. This is the opposite of the current version (6). If we do not encourage users to switch to the Openjdk, bugs won't be fixed in the 6 or 7 for a while.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  It just seems to me like reinvention of the wheel for its own sake. Why not just make it as easy on the user as possible by providing very easy installs for the most well-developed software, and for more experienced users, continue providing these open-source efforts? Seems like the same thought process at work that brought us cruft like the Unity UI in 11.04, then forced it on users as default, instead of just offering it as a new, less-stable alternative.
  - sylvestre 15y ago
    We are not reinventing anything. We are dropping a package which won't be supported anymore. More over, JDK/JRE 7 is already in the Debian archive and available.
foolinator 15y ago
Hate to tell you - it's already prime time in business, just not in consumerland. And that's only because it doesn't have MS Office/Photoshop.

fmw 15y ago

This will be a nuisance, because e.g. Clojure just works better with the Sun Java packages. The Sun packages don't just have performance improvements, but the Clojure devs seem to be actively targeting them. Even if this might lead to improvements to the OpenJDK in the long term it is one hell of a nuisance to have to go around the operating system package management scheme for Java. The lesson is to actively mistrust Oracle and invest more time in solutions that are independent from that company.

SkyMarshal 15y ago
For Ubuntu I expect someone will create a PPA for Sun Java. I don't know if there's anything similar for Redhat/Fedora/Cent but wherever it's possible, I expect that will be the workaround of choice.
- sciurus 15y ago
  This won't happen because the license for future Oracle Java releases won't allow redistribution. http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Someone will come along like sevenmachines and create a PPA with a "sun-java6-installer" to mirror the "flashplugin64-installer" that downloads the pack of binaries and installs them from Oracle's servers.
  - Jach 15y ago
    The way Gentoo handles this sort of thing (it does it with truecrypt) is keeping the ebuild and so forth around, but when it comes time to fetch the sources it will stop and tell you to go download the tar file from wherever it's usually at and stick it in the dist folder.
- veeti 15y ago
  Sun/Oracle already provide RPM packages for Java.

yellowbkpk 15y ago

Java-related Ubuntu/Debian packages (eclipse, openjdk, maven, ant, etc.) have always been notoriously bad and slow to update. Installing sun-java6-jdk sure made things easier but I guess I'll have to learn how to do it by hand now, just like I do with all the other Java-related software I use on Ubuntu every day.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
I think Eclipse is still on 3.3 or something in the main repo! The whole java thing's a bit of a mess from a 'casual user' perspective. Some packages won't work without the sun-java6 ones. Some appear to be optimised for it. There's at least one that I know of (but can't remember the name of at the mo - it's an IDE though) that refuses to install without them! My naïve self would have thought to try and reduce the reliance on java, but of course the cost (of any type) would outweigh any potential benefit.
- din-9 15y ago
  http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keywords=eclipse http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keyword... shows Debian stable is on 3.5. That was still one version behind at the release of Squeeze, but saying 3.3 (two more years behind) is unfair. Experimental has 3.7 packages, so the situation seems to be improving.
- smhinsey 15y ago
  You might be thinking of IntelliJ. It only works on the sun-java6 packages. Or at least that was the case last time I set it up.
  - andor 15y ago
    IntelliJ works just fine with OpenJDK.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

based2 15y ago

Will they do a librejava package ?

rbanffy 15y ago
It's called OpenJDK.

ak217 15y ago

The title is misleading. I don't see this changing anything for e.g. Gentoo.

budu3 15y ago

Oracle can't seem to see how they're destroying the Java ecosystem. I hope OpenJDK can keep it alive.

4ad 15y ago
They're destroying the Java ecosystem for casual users and hobby developers, and they do it on purpose. It doesn't affect enterprises and enterprise software development. It's sad, very sad, but it's the way Oracle works. They're also destroying Solaris the same way.

bobf 15y ago

Check out fpm if you're concerned about packaging issues - https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm It makes it incredibly easy to create an rpm/deb/etc. from a directory, rpm, npm, gem, python module, etc. Here's a BayLISA video about it: http://vimeo.com/23940598 http://vimeo.com/23940598

lamby 15y ago
I'm sure fpm works in a lot of cases but something tells me that it's not straightforward to package a JVM..
- mbreese 15y ago
  You can download an rpm, so it should just be a matter of conversion. At least the last time I did this, you downloaded a shell script that when you agreed to the license extracted an rpm from itself. So it should be a little more straightforward. Of course, when yoiu roll your own package, you don't get automatic security updates, so that's still a pain.
- sciurus 15y ago
  Agreed. I spent some time updating the jpackage project's nosrc RPMs to work with newer versions of the JRE. There is a lot of complexity involved in making what Oracle's JRE installer delivers integrate nicely with the rest of the system.
fungi 15y ago
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/java-package http://packages.debian.org/lenny/java-package dosen't seem to be available in debian stable, but i see it in my ubuntu 10.04. last time i used it i needed to modify (couple of lines) to accommodate file name used by modern java versions. it works well as far as i can tell. openjdk is a far more sustainable solution but we needed sun java for some proprietary crap that refused to run on java or tomcat from the repos.

psadauskas 15y ago

I'm sure somewhere RMS is saying "I told you so."

adbge 15y ago
You must be careful, however, because not every Java platform is free. Sun continues distributing an executable Java platform which is nonfree, and other companies do so too. The free environment for Java is called IcedTea; the source code Sun freed is included in that. So that is the one you should use. Many GNU/Linux distributions come with IcedTea, but some include nonfree Java platforms. To reliably ensure your Java programs run fine in a free environment, you need to develop them using IcedTea. Theoretically the Java platforms should be compatible, but they are not compatible 100 percent. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

naner 15y ago

I often wondered if making the non-free stuff harder to use (Flash, Java, etc) will push free software devs to improve the free stuff. It might be good for Clojure and other Java projects to work towards having full control over their platform and distribution instead of having to rely on Oracle.

riffraff 15y ago
it could as well be that free software devs would have less motivation to improve the free stuff, since there is no competition. (In general, I don't think it has a big impact in either direction)
- Peaker 15y ago
  It may cause some itches that were previously scratched by the non-free solution, though.

emilsedgh 15y ago

I wonder why Oracle changes that in the first place? Is it their attempt to compete with Red Hat on RHEL? Basically, this means enterprise users will have to move to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux. (Which, is ironically, based on RHEL)

mindstab 15y ago

People (including Ubuntu/Debian) seem to think that openJDK is just a bit slower and "less polished" but a fine drop in replacement. It has been my experience there is lot's of stuff it still just doesn't support. The saddest and most obvious was last time I was helping a first year comp sci student they couldn't even do lab #1 in it since openjdk didn't have the fancy new output writers. Sure you "don't need" them, and a bunch of other things it's missing, but those missing things quickly add up and start spelling lots of software that openJDK cannot run. And also first year comp sci students can't even use it for school. It is not a drop in replacement that is a bit slower, it is incomplete and I'm tired of people not understanding this. There are things it cannot do and software it cannot run.

yesimahuman 15y ago
Can you elaborate on the missing output writer support? I had a lot of software running with Lucene/Solr and my own code and never had an issue with OpenJDK.

riobard 15y ago

Does anyone have issues with Scala running on OpenJDK?

copper 15y ago
Well, it works for me (Arch64/OpenJDK), but then I haven't done much more than work partway through the scala tutorials.

scanr 15y ago

This is unfortunate. We'd consistently get hit by a 100% CPU NIO bug by OpenJDK on Ubuntu. OpenJDK also packages Rhino in the org.mozilla package which makes it painful to use a different version of Rhino. It's definitely not a drop in replacement.

g-garron 15y ago

From what I've read here: http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html http://robilad.livejournal.com/90792.html "Linux users who prefer to use the thoroughly tested Oracle JDK 6 or Oracle JDK 7 binaries over OpenJDK builds packaged in their Linux distributions of choice can of course as usual simply get the gratis download at http://oracle.com/java http://oracle.com/java under the same terms as users on other platforms." So it seems only like a license change, is that true?

sylvestre 15y ago
Yes, it is "only" a license issue.

movingahead 15y ago

When I tested Hadoop, the documentation suggested Sun JDK. Even Android asks for the Sun JDK. http://developer.android.com/sdk/requirements.html http://developer.android.com/sdk/requirements.html I hope all these communities take active effort in supporting OpenJDK henceforth.