[advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris for Java developers?

[Bill Rushmore]

You made some good points and I am not disagreeing with what you are 
saying.  But what I was originally  trying to point out is how easy it 
is for a Java developer to try out OpenSolaris.   It is just a hook to 
get them interested and to see what OpenSolaris is all about.

Bill

Kristian Rink wrote:
> Hi Bill, *;
>
>   
>> You did miss the point.  On OpenSolaris you type one command:
>>
>> $ pfexec pkg install java-dev
>>
>> Then you get the JDK, Netbeans, ANT, etc.  And since all of this is
>> coming from the package manager updates are a one step process as well.
>>     
>
>
> Sure. I can have things similar to that on Ubuntu 8.04, and yet I never so
> far used them because I prefer having current versions of JDK, ant,
> NetBeans, ... installed rather than those off the package repositories which
> in most cases are a little older (i.e. hardy ships with NetBeans 6.0.1 ...).
> But that's probably not even my problem.
>
> What does bug me a little about this is: I wonder why discussing the
> "ease"(?) of installing software is something making or not making a
> platform a good choice for some kind of developer. Given that, MS Windows
> hardly would be a good choice for anything, as it requires you to enter a
> CD/DVD or download some files or whatever, make your way through arcane
> installation routines in order to have anything available rather than even
> thinking of something similar to "apt" or IPS. From that point of view
> however, aren't OpenSolaris and Linux and Win32 "same as good for Java
> developers", given that in most cases
>
> - installing the JDK is a breeze and rather straightforward (the Windows
> installer is trivial to use, the Unix installer is nothing more than a
> self-extracting archive or an rpm),
>
> - installing NetBeans, tomcat and glassfish at best is simply extracting
> archives to somewhere and getting applications launched / work done?
>
> Don't get me wrong, I think for beginners having packages installable via
> "IPS" is not a bad thing, but I hardly think this is what does or does not
> make an operating system a good choice for Java developers... ;) Not even
> discussing the (dis)advantages of wrapping an application like NetBeans
> (basically providing its own package manager) up in even another package
> manager...
>
> Cheers,
> Kristian
>
>