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> Besides Sun really has a cross platform ecosystem with 1st party support of Linux You may think so now, but for a long time, Sun didn't allow distributors to

> Besides Sun really has a cross platform ecosystem with 1st party support of Linux You may think so now, but for a long time, Sun didn't allow distributors to include Java in their repositories. If you wanted Java, you had to go download it yourself. And all your users did, too, whether from Sun or from the JRE you bundled with your app. In other words, if you chose Java, you also chose bloat and a tiny userbase. Not to mention, Java is a second-class citizen on the Mac. You never know what's going to happen between Apple and Sun. Another obvious candidate, Python, was already on everyone's machines. But to be cross-platform, you have to code carefully and ask your users to find/install GTK2 and dependencies on Windows. With Python, the bloat (from a user's POV) is only confined to Windows. Perl is widely available, but not really cross-platform. They're still struggling with Neopolitan Perl to support Windows without relying on the goodness of ActiveState. So Java becoming useful has been about 5-8 years too late, and it's still beholden to Apple on one platform. Other alternatives also suck, so the FOSS world has continued using C/C++. Without a clear winner, what's the point of switching languages? And as far as cross-platform goes, even if something was perfectly cross-platform, I wonder if FOSS developers would support it. Projects like Inkscape are torn between the increased userbase from Windows, and the increased tech support for windows that those users would require, when the developers often don't have Windows machines to develop and test on.

krschultz 18y ago
I agree with you that Sun will forever be held back by their past actions. Must the same way KDE is still not quite as accepted because of the Qt licensing scuffle - what 10 years ago? However when you look at the success of big complex projects - Eclipse coming to mind first - on Java, there is no equivalent on .NET that really works on every platform. I too think there will be another language that succeeds C++ in FOSS, and I thought it would be Python, but not so sure now. C will always live on in a lot of the more important stuff like the kernel and basic utilities, but desktop apps will eventually move on. That is a discussion for something else, but I don't believe it will be Java or Mono. I'm just saying that Java is a better system if your primary goal is cross platform. If your primary goal is to build great Linux apps - then it is not.
shadytrees 18y ago
> They're still struggling with Neopolitan Perl to support Windows without relying on the goodness of ActiveState. I think Strawberry Perl has solved the pain of installing Perl on Windows. `cpan` actually works out of the box since the installation includes `gcc` and `make`. (I just wish it wouldn't automatically install to `c:\strawberry`.)
- sapphirecat 18y ago
  Interesting. I see it's finally out of beta. I would even try it if I were still stuck in win32.
chaostheory 18y ago
"You may think so now, but for a long time, Sun didn't allow distributors to include Java in their repositories" that's really ancient news that has already changed. if mono focused more on being a general CLR instead of just some bastard version of C# (that is a good number of versions and features behind), I'd be more for it. Unfortunately I feel that I just gave a pretty good description of it
- sapphirecat 18y ago
  > that's really ancient news that has already changed. Yet you still don't find it in e.g. ubuntu-desktop, unlike Perl (dependency: libgnome2-perl) or Python (recommended: gimp-python). Gentoo Portage was written in Python when I ran that, so Python was always installed there. Java wasn't. The underlying reason may have changed, but the effect remains.

krschultz 18y ago

I agree with you that Sun will forever be held back by their past actions. Must the same way KDE is still not quite as accepted because of the Qt licensing scuffle - what 10 years ago? However when you look at the success of big complex projects - Eclipse coming to mind first - on Java, there is no equivalent on .NET that really works on every platform. I too think there will be another language that succeeds C++ in FOSS, and I thought it would be Python, but not so sure now. C will always live on in a lot of the more important stuff like the kernel and basic utilities, but desktop apps will eventually move on. That is a discussion for something else, but I don't believe it will be Java or Mono. I'm just saying that Java is a better system if your primary goal is cross platform. If your primary goal is to build great Linux apps - then it is not.

shadytrees 18y ago

> They're still struggling with Neopolitan Perl to support Windows without relying on the goodness of ActiveState. I think Strawberry Perl has solved the pain of installing Perl on Windows. `cpan` actually works out of the box since the installation includes `gcc` and `make`. (I just wish it wouldn't automatically install to `c:\strawberry`.)

sapphirecat 18y ago
Interesting. I see it's finally out of beta. I would even try it if I were still stuck in win32.

chaostheory 18y ago

"You may think so now, but for a long time, Sun didn't allow distributors to include Java in their repositories" that's really ancient news that has already changed. if mono focused more on being a general CLR instead of just some bastard version of C# (that is a good number of versions and features behind), I'd be more for it. Unfortunately I feel that I just gave a pretty good description of it

sapphirecat 18y ago
> that's really ancient news that has already changed. Yet you still don't find it in e.g. ubuntu-desktop, unlike Perl (dependency: libgnome2-perl) or Python (recommended: gimp-python). Gentoo Portage was written in Python when I ran that, so Python was always installed there. Java wasn't. The underlying reason may have changed, but the effect remains.