Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros

Posted Sep 24, 2010 20:24 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros by rgmoore
Parent article: Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros

I think this is exactly what the Linux distribution model got wrong. Theoretically it's nice, everything works together, a fix in the common library fixes the applications - but in practice the applications depend on each other way too much, can't easily downgrade/upgrade a single application.

Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros

Posted Sep 24, 2010 21:07 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

This problem is very real, but how bad it is depends a lot on what types of things you are doing on your linux box.

Unfortunantly, the desktop application space is the worst area, and the "Desktop Environment" projects (as opposed to just applications that run on the desktop and will work on just about any desktop) are espcially bad. They seem to think that they dictate the entire system and nobody ever has any reason not to do things the way (with the specific software and version) that they prefer.

Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros

Posted Sep 25, 2010 8:22 UTC (Sat) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (1 responses)

> but in practice the applications depend on each other way too much, can't easily downgrade/upgrade a single application.

Usually they depend on the same libraries, not each other. I know KDE has a stable ABI; why they choose to update everything at once probably has an explanation... I can't think of any right now.

Carrez: The real problem with Java in Linux distros

Posted Oct 4, 2010 11:30 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, when libraries gain new facilities, those facilities have to be used by something or they might as well not be there. So even if everything is backward-compatible, you have to version the libraries to indicate the addition of new facilities, *and* you have to version the applications to indicate that they require a library with those new facilities. Giving both the same version number and releasing them simultaneously seems like a not-too-confusing-to-users way to do that.