Hi all!
This is my first post on the forum so I hope it’s in the right place! I am fairly new to linux and I have tried many distro’s, but this one I just fell in love with. I was wondering what the quality of developing Java applications was like on it & if it is any good?
Just want people to reflect on their experiences and just have a general chat (Not too technical as I’m still fairly new to Java (n00b! xD)).
Thanks,
QWERTY
Same as on any other Linux distro. Java is its own world. Once you have installed the JDK or JRE, the experience is in the hands of Java.
You might want to try downloading the Netbeans 6.7.1 cobundle. It includes both the JDK and the IDE in the same installation. But as the previous poster acknowledged, there’s probably no difference pertaining to distro.
Ok, I am hardly a java expert, but I think maybe there is some explaining in order here. There is nothing particularly special about openSUSE’s Java implementation, but then again, there is nothing wrong with it either. I think what Ken was trying to express earlier is that java is a compile once run anywhere framework–i.e. as long as a virtual machine, known as the “JVM”, has been ported to a system, and I am assuming some standard system libraries have to be ported as well but as I say I’m not an expert, then all java programs run on that system without any further effort on the part of the programmer. The important thing to know is that Linux is one of those systems that the JVM has been ported to (along with most other major targets, including my cable box).
Java developement tools tend to be written in java, so they work on linux and openSUSE just fine. The two big names in the area of java development environments are Netbeans and Eclipse, I have found that Netbeans worked fine out of the repositories, but with Eclipse it was better to install the newest version by unpacking the tarball into my home directory. I have found Eclipse to be sluggish, but it has a lot of plug-ins and if one of them makes your life that much easier it could be worth it. Don’t remember how I installed the JDK but checking my system it didn’t come from an rpm, but you will need it and I would get it first, link given above is probably as good as any, but I’d imagine there is also a repository that has it. There’s some java repos listed here but they might be for the runtime: Package repositories - openSUSE
The one issue to consider with Netbeans is that it is now part of the Oracle evil empire. Oracle is in the process of stripping out some of the open-source features, such as Ruby support, in favor of Oracle products. In fact, Netbeans 7.0 will no longer offer support for Ruby or Rails apps. Will they do the same with Python and Jython, who knows? However, Java is still a core aspect of Oracle’s business, so if you’re just interested in doing Java development, Netbeans will be nice for that.
Thanks everyone for all the really helpful reply’s! 