Re: java, jdk, blackdown & redhat

[Heikki Korpela <heko@saitti.net>]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Craig Miller wrote:

> Why run OpenBSD if I have to run a redhat emulator in order to run my
> servers?  Seriously, I am wondering if there is a benefit to running it this
> way over running blackdown in its native redhat environment.

There is very little if any performance penalty (linux binaries
have been repeatedly reported to run faster under emulation in
other OS's - but this does not of course mean they are always
faster).

The main penalty is stability of the Java environment. If you require
that, I suggest using another OS that has a native and better-tested
JRE/JDK for now. The current Java port is ok for non-critical things,
if I've understood correctly - I assume someone will holler at this
point if I'm mistaken. I haven't had (at least knowingly) any problems
with it myself, but I don't think anyone guarantees it works
smoothly in every situation. Unfortunately, the Java compatibility kit
from Sun is also a closed standard, and all I've been able to test it
with is mauve, a GPL'd compatibility kit, that reports very few problems
(approx. 0.3% of the tests fail) with it.

If you like OpenBSD, I suggest you help producing a native port of a
JDK to BSD. But I wouldn't mess this up with production platforms.

Try running the JDK under Slackware, or RedHat 7.1, BTW. I wonder
when linux distributions will have RedHat 6.2 emulation. :-)

"Write once, implement everywhere."

> Thanks,
> --Craig

<!-- ---------------------- 72 characters -------------------------- -->
                   Heikki Korpela -- heko@saitti.net