[PLUG] Java on Ubuntu 10.04
Richard C. Steffens
rsteff at comcast.net
Fri Aug 10 22:59:48 UTC 2012
Which version of Java should I be trying to use?
It's been said here on several occasions, "The great thing about
standards is that there are so many to chose from." I seem to be
floundering in a small sea of them.
I've discovered that at some point, probably one of the last Firefox
upgrades, that I no longer have Java support in Firefox. I want to
upload a photo to Costco's photo web site, which I successfully did back
in December, 2011, and found that the uploader didn't work. The
recommendation was to go get the current version of Java.
After spending some time looking at
http://java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp?locale=en I finally found a
link to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java which tells me that
"Oracle (Sun) Java 6 is no longer available to be distributed by Ubuntu,
because of license issues." As I look in Synaptic I see that Sun Java 6
is what I have. I also see on the above mentioned Ubuntu help page that
I can download and install Oracle Java 7, but that there are no .deb
packages available. I can install the JRE from a script or the entire
Java development version from the command line, and that there are
instructions that I can follow.
My main concern is that LibreOffice continues to run after going through
all the uninstall and install steps. That's one reason why I have Ubuntu
10.04 installed on both my laptop and my desktop. This lets me test an
install on the laptop before committing to it on the desktop. While not
perfect it seems to work reasonably well. So, I started by completely
removing Sun Java 6, using Synaptic. Selecting that also selected
LibreOffice. I went ahead and uninstalled. After finishing, LibreOffice
still works. Also, after rebooting, LibreOffice still works. I don't
know what that implies.
I looked at the LibreOffice site and saw that it is happy with OpenJDK.
On the OpenJDK site I saw that I can install openjdk-7-jre with apt-get.
But, when I try running
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
I get an error message that says, "Package openjdk-7-jre is not
available, bit is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source.
E: Package openjdk-7-jre has no installation candidate"
I also note that on the OpenJDK site there are also JDK 6 and JDK 8
versions. JDK 8 appears to be very much in a development state. And on
openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk6/ there is a chart under the heading
"Genealogy" that only adds to my confusion.
I also find openjdk-6-jre in Synaptic, but there are three different
versions, openjdk-6-jre-headless, openjdk-6-jre and openjdk-6-jre-zero.
The first two use Hotspot JIT and the second uses Zero/Shark.
So, I'm confused. How do I decide which version to use?
TIA for any recommendations.
--
Regards,
Dick Steffens
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