Linux distros for Java Development

Question

Simply, are there any Java Developer specific Linux distros?

Answer 1

The distro which is most developer friendly, in my opinion, is Gentoo. Since you compile everything from scratch, you choose exactly what makes up your system. Java can be installed very easily, so you could potentially just have a window environment and Java installed (aside from the standard tool chain.)

Answer 2

A real Sun geek would chime in here about the virtues of using Solaris as a Java development platform, but I am much more ambivalent. Developing with Java is about the same on any linux distro; you are going to wind up having to install the JDK and tools of your choosing (Eclipse, Sun Studio, Tomcat, etc) so you may as well choose a distro on other criteria... perhaps how comfortable you are with it, how easy package management is, and if the look & feel suit your development habits are all big factors.

So, to answer your question more directly, a Java developer would do well with any major linux distro that they are comfortable with using in general. If you want some Java goodness out of the box, Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 have OpenJDK (and NetBeans) according to a recent announcement.

Answer 3

Solaris :)

On a serious note, there is no Linux distro dedicated to Java, so it would be about the same.

OpenSolaris on the other hand (in my very humble experience) would be a bit faster, and you would have bonus of Dtrace as a tool. (Not that you can't find similar tools in Linux, but Dtrace should be somewhat more advanced).

Answer 4

Hi,

I am very heavy into Java development and I personally use Ubuntu, so I agree with Sean on this one.

The package manager allows you to easily install the various SDKs (the SUN one, or even the upcoming OpenJDK 7).

Regards,

Arjen

Answer 5

I have used Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9 with success.

For Ubuntu, the community forums were very helpful and if I remember correctly one of the repositories provided apt packages for Sun's Java6 distribution.

On Fedora 9, the Sun rpms work alright.

In either case, alternative/galternative is your friend to make sure that you point "java" and "javac" at the Sun install. I've been using Netbeans 6.1 and Eclipse 3.4 both on Fedora 9_x64 with no problems.

Answer 6

There are no licencing issues - the OpenJDK its now 100% GPL and linux friendly. So @Kyle is mistaken.

Answer 7

While not really a distribution, there is a virtual machine available for Tomcat. It could be adapted pretty easily for other Java based deployments (available for several virtualization technologies).

There are also several Java App Server VMs available from VMWare (VMWare only, of course).

Answer 8

I had a pleasant experience with Mandriva power pack 2008. Select something like development->"java tools" and everything is installed for you.

Everything being Sun JRE, JDK, and eclispe.

Solaris did install a 64bit kernel by default though.....

Answer 9

Either SUSE or RH, both have official support. http://www.java.com/en/download/help/5000010500.xml

Answer 10

Dont listen to any of these noobs suggesting one distro over another. Java is Java and just about all distros can install java as such:

[package manager command to install] jdk

If the question was about creating RPM's, then obviously RH/CentOS/Fedora would be desirable over deb distros, source distros, or whatever other format you love. However, due to the nature of Java, a specific distro to use is only relevant if the OP cant formulate their own opinion and must follow whatever other people are doing.

To reiterate There is no java distro , use whatever will have you hit the ground running.

// begin hypocritical personal recomendation

... that being said ... I personally use Archlinux. Archlinux works on rolling releases so it is more likely to have a more recent JDK version then the "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sleep 6 months" distros of the world.

// end hypocritical personal recomendation

Also, I am fully prepared to get downvoted, but please, leave me above 50 so i can comment still, thanks!

Answer 11

Just be careful with your distro's java installation. Most install gcj by default. For whatever reason, typing "java" into bash on most linux distros will not invoke a Sun JVM without some futzing.

Usually, there needs to be a bunch of soft-linking from /usr/local/bin -> $JDK_HOME/bin/* to get things working as I typically expect them.

Answer 12

For a start: most -if not all- linux distribution allow you to "easily" install (that is: using the distribution's package manager) jdk's and jre's. The choice essentialy is more about what aspect of the distribution is most relevant to your personal taste.

Personnaly, I've come to value overall distribution stability (as in: upgrades to the base system are more or less guaranteed-not-to-hose-my-workstation-one-day-before-delivery-date) more, which made me stick with debian for the past few years.

The price to pay for that is either "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sleep 6 months" as theman_on_vista points out, or just install relevant stuff yourself in /opt. After all, installing some jdk's, maven or ant and eclipse|netbeans is easy enough (hell, there even is documentation somewhere I'm sure :) )

Answer 13

I have never heard of a Java-developer-specific Linux distro.

If you need a Linux distro for work purposes (not for personal home use) then the choice of distro is not really affected by the fact that you need to install a JDK, but other factors:

• how quickly can it be installed?
• how easy is it to maintain (updates etc)?
• how fully-featured is it out-of-the-box?
• how well supported is it? (commercial support if you need it, otherwise how good is community support?)

My suggestions for work-purposes: Ubuntu and Suse have been good for me. I have no experience with the others mentioned (eg: Fedora).

Basically, get a distro that "just plain works". Everything you need (JDK, IDE, etc) will almost certainly be easily installed from there.

Answer 14

Latest Ubuntu version. It is easy enough and have packaged Sun Java, Eclipse, NetBeans, GlassFish, TomCat and other Java development related software so you have no worries installing and configuring it from scratch.

Answer 15

You can choose any of the distro available bcoz dere is no linux distro specifically for java development. Personally I have worked on RHEL 5, Fedora 9, Mandriva with considerable success.

Working on java is same on any linux distribution after the installation of jdk, tomcat, eclipse, etc.

Answer 16

As Nick Stinemates mentioned, Gentoo is an excellent distro for developing Java. It is one of the few Distros that I know of that has a very active Java maintainer group and almost everything that people use regularly is already packaged.

Be warned, Gentoo is not a drop dead simple distro to use Ubuntu -- you have to understand a bit about how the OS works -- but it does provide an excellent developerment environment.

Answer 17

Simply No, till date

Answer 18

I think the motive for this question is focused on the convenience of setup: Is there any distro that has Eclipse and the full Sun Java package (JRE, JDK, and DOCS) already "baked in" so that a manual install process (and deinstall of OpenJDK) is not required?

Having an "out-of-the-box" standardized environment for a development team is a huge time saver. If you don't already have access to a Java-experienced Linux SysAdmin to guide you through the process of rolling your own automated install, learning enough to do it yourself is definitely frustrating.

Few Developers enjoy spending their time wrenching around with OS internals to get tools like Glassfish, Derby, Groovy, Grails, GWT, etc. all working together. They prefer to go directly to writing code and inventing stuff inside a personal sandbox that exploits a pre-existing ecosystem of built-in services...

On the deployment side, having a common Linux install that requires no system-level configuration for end-users except for installing their favorite Java applications' .JAR file would be another big win.

There's definitely a market for someone to provide this, but most folks are simply gritting their teeth and doing it for themselves.