Java and FC4

[blinksilver]

from what i hear, there is alot of buzz around the "free" java in FC4, i was wondering if the java was only there for running OOo and for dev, or is it "smart" enough to web based java?

[pgb]

Well, a bunch of (mainly non-graphical) things do run on free Java nowadays but Java2D and Swing is are not enabled in FC4 AFAIK so anything that needs that is out.

Regarding applets, the applet veiwer for gcj (gcjwebplugin) does not have a security manager so it doesn't provide a sandbox. Thus it's not really suitable for general use, and as such it isn't included in Fedora Core (with the lack of Swing I'm not so sure it would be particularly useful anywas.) For FC4 you'll unfortunately be much better off with Sun Java for applets (although preferably using the jpackage packaging, which integrates better with other RPMs: http://jpackage.org and use their nosrc rpm + the Sun zip file to build a sane RPM - instructions on the jpackage site.)

Classpath is improving rapidly though, so for FC5 perhaps things will have changed... I sure hope so, since I'd prefer an open source solution and I have had tons of problems with Sun's VMs. (Of course, having it work out of the box is a nice bonus.)