Tags: Java
Fabrizio Giudici asks
Java with apt-get, what's the scoop?
The big deal is we're taking steps towards a world where Java is a default part of more operating systems. Linux being very popular among the geeks we care about, we want Java to be a default part of Linux. Changing the license to GPLv2 will go a long way to that happening in that every Linux distribution will be free to incorporate the JDK into their core distribution. But the big deal of making it so apt-get or emerge or yum works is to simplify the process of getting the JDK onto the system and allowing the distribution maker to integrate the JDK bits in the way that makes sense for their system. You don't have to do unnatural things with environment variables, instead the "java" command just works with no further muss or fuss.
Other Linux distributions are free to take part in what Debian/Ubuntu have done. Gentoo and Mandriva have done so. See the jdk-distros project for information allowing an operating system distro to repackage Sun's binary JDK bits for their system.
Source:
weblogs.java.net
