There are several very good points made. here, but lets be honest, flash is de-facto because if you go anywhere on the net, you're going to get prompted to install it. Given that may/most(?) users will click through any installation prompt without bothering with security, they get flash if they care or not. Now that pretty much every web based video is hosted through a flash container, its hard to find people that don't want/need it.
Java on the other hand has not found its sweet must-have niche on the web, and its installation numbers reflect it. Reasons why Linux users have a valid reason to hate / dislike Java: 1. They've generally been using computers long enough to remember the first few horribly difficult releases of Java, and have never used it since (It was hard for me to get to like Java after being told to learn 1.1 in school) 2. There are few must-have applications on linux that don't have native alternatives that are comparable. I'd Azureus is the closest thing to the killer-app for Java and its SWT based =) 3. Java support in distributions has historically been bad. Fedora defaults to install OpenJDK, so that's definitely getting better 4. Sun doesn't embrace releases through distribution packaging (I'm no fan of 'alternatives' but it seems to be the de-facto). If I could get a sun based YUM repository for fedora, I'd jump on it in an instant, and I'm sure many others would as well. 5. 64-bit webstart / Java web plugins were only released in 1.6.0_12 which meant using the klunky nswrapper to get plugins working on a stock 64-bit OS / firefox 6. No JavaFX is more of an f-you to Linux users than anything else considering how easy a Mac-Linux port would be (http:// www.weiqigao.com/blog/2008/08/05/watch_javafx_sdk_run_on_linux.html). For me it just means that I won't develop for the technology any time soon. > 4. icedtea6 is still very buggy, especially it's java web start support. Very true. Before Icedtea, all open JVM's were basically unusable. With IcedTea, we can run -some- applications, but its very far from the compatibility to run most Java apps. This may also be the fault of applications using sun protected implementation classes (com.sun.image.codec.jpeg), who knows. PS: Obligatory KDE sucks, stick with gnome =) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
