Fedora and Java - just give us the facts

[Les Mikesell]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Timothy Murphy wrote:
> 
>> (1) How complete is Fedora Java?
> 
> Answered in the Java FAQ you referred to
> 
>> I have seen warnings for example that it is unsafe
>> to use the Fedora Java plugin for Firefox,
>> and I assume that the same warning would hold true
>> for other Java applications, eg mindterm.
> 
> No. The unsafe warnings apply only to applet and not applications.
> 
>>
>> (2) Are the two Java installations completely independent?
>> Can one have both installed?
>> What about the environment variable CLASSPATH?
> 
> Yes. You can use alternatives to switch between them.

However, alternatives is an all-or-nothing switch, while different users 
might want to use different JVM's at the same time, or you might want 
different apps to use different JVM's.  You can do that by setting 
JAVA_HOME appropriately and providing the right path to the 
java/javac/jar that you start, but it is fairly difficult to find the 
right settings for the locations for things that use the alternatives 
system since it is hidden behind many levels of symlink indirection.
You might find it easier to just drop Sun's binary install(s) under 
/usr/java and set JAVA_HOME for the one you want to use.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com