On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 12:03 PM, liberty young wrote:

> I'm kinda leaning toward Sun's Java. The IDE (netbeans) is good, and 
> the
> install process of both the JSDK and the IDE are very painless. I
> wouldn't want to install Sun's without offering and explaining the
> alternative, but I stick to the 'official' java.
>
> I'm going on a limb, but i'm assuming that all the classes at our
> universities and community colleges are using Sun's. I'd rather show
> people how the Linux OS offers people Choices, not just
> ideology-compatible alternatives. The ability to take the  work from a 
> a
> Window's machine and gracefully transition to a Linux station is very
> powerful.

This is just an impression but it always seemed to me that Sum cares 
about how Java works on Windows and they kind of give lip service to it 
on other platforms, even Solaris. Blackdown and IBM seem much more 
committed to making Java a good experience on Linux. I don't think it's 
so much a matter of ideology as it is of just supporting projects that 
support your platform.

I bet the vast majority of the classes at our universities and 
community colleges are using Windows but that's not a good reason to 
abandon Linux.

Having said that, I do feel much better about Sun now that there is a 
FreeBSD version and a Mac version that's not total crap. If they just 
supported a few more Linux distros, it would completely reverse my 
impression.