The Sun's 1.4.2 Linux binary for x86 is pretty good. The plugins for the
browser's work. I'm currently involved in a project with a college who
develops on his Windows machine, and I on my Linux machine. We share
code via CVS, and we both have the same performance. We're not doing
enterprise level stuff, so I can't vouch for that, but for what we are
doing, I haven't seen Sun's JSDK  behave any worse on my machine than on
the Windows machine. 

As far as supporting various distributions, I used to run Mandrake 8.2
and 9.0,  and now Debian Woody. The installation was painless (download
and run the self extracting binary) and cleaner than a ( make; make
install). Everything gets thrown into a directory you specify, and It
Just Works. True, you have to manually set your classpath, but I like
how Sun keeps it's hands out from the rest of my box. I never bothered
with the RPM install they have for download.

 The self extracting binary is truely Distribution Independent. 

I will say that Sun's Forte and Sun's Studio One performed better on my
Linux machine than on my friend's Win2k machine, but then Sun started
shipping NetBeans IDE 3.5, which while an improvement in software and
features, constantly crashed on my machine. It was funny, as this was
the exact opposite in the previous IDE (Sun Studio One, based on
NetBeans). In Windows, Studio One kept crashing, and was stable on my
Linux box. I've seen improvement in stability with Netbeans 3.5.1,
though my college and I both have beefs with the usefulness of NetBeans
IDE

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against other Javas. I have no experience
with Blackdown, Kafe, or whatever IBM is shipping. I also have no
experience with Eclipse, though my friend's hate it (that could be a
biased with a familiarity with Forte). 

I just don't want to outright dismiss the Sun JSDK. I like the fact that
the code my friend writes on his machine behaves (for better or worse)
exactly the same on my machine. 

On Thu, 2003-10-09 at 12:45, Chris Gehlker wrote: 
> 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.
> 
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