On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 11:01:56PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > (i) What is icedtea-web? > > If you had actually clicked on the homepage link in the emerge -s > output you posted, you would have seen in the very first bullet point > right at the start of the page that icedtea-web is mostly Java Web Start
The problem is: that doesn't help me at all. What the heck is Web Start? The corporate-lese at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/index-jsp-136112.html doesn't really tell me why or whether I need it. > > (iv) Do I really need to have so many different java things on my > > computer? > > Do you need to have so many different browsers on your computer? > How about editors? Or for that matter why do you have so many coding > languages available? How about openoffice? > > It's not "so many", that's a ridiculous assertion. First you have > a choice between iced-tea built from source or a bin package. Firefox > and OOo do the same. Then there's icedtea-web which is a whole > different package altogether, implementing Java Web Start (which is not > the java language, the sdk or a jvm). > > So, if you want Java as implemented by iced-tea, pick between source > and -bin. If you want JWS, then emerge that too. > > Did you even attempt to google this and find answers yourself? Did you read my question? The problem is not that so many JDKs are available. The problem is "why does portage want to install them all"? (Scroll up to the top of my message and see the emerge --update output which wants to SLOT all three of icedtea, icedtea-bin, icedtea-web.) So cut the snark, Alan. To spell out the question for you more clearly: Why does portage want to install ALL three kinds of icedteas, when all I really need is a JRE? Is there some subtle differences between the three such that I must have all three available? Is the 6->7 major version update one which they significantly changed the API so things start breaking left and right? <rant> I have two GCCs on my computer because some legacy code won't build with GCC4. I have both perl and python for the obvious reasons. I've long exorcised Emacs because I never use it and prefer Vim. So I do know a thing or two about this "choice" business in FOSS. What I don't know (as I admitted so much in the first sentence of my original post) is Java. I don't code in it. I don't (to the best of my knowledge) have any packages installed via portage that has code written in Java. All I need is a JRE to look at some applets on the internet and run a couple pre-compiled Java applications on my desktop. It may be that I somehow acquired a need for a JDK and I forgot, I don't know, but why is it that portage wants to installed two JDKS and on top of that some web-based JRE at the same time? </rant> W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
