Always use the latest jdk version


Sun/Oracle’s JDK 1.6 was excluded from Ubuntu repositories (the reason are security holes which would not be fixed by Oracle + license issues). Since 1.7, Ubuntu sticks to OpenJDK, which is fine, but causes troubles with my coding (yes, it should not, but it does).

So, I have had to move towards Sun JDK 1.7 and try to work as I used. The drawback is that now, instead of having a nice apt-get, I had to install things manually, which I was not used to at all. When I started in linux, I used to compile everything from scratch (even the kernel), but ubuntu just made me a lazy man in administration issues. Now I prefer to focus in my work instead of how to bring to my computer the software I need to work.

A workaround consists in installing a ppa from web8team. For those who don’t know, web8team are quite known in the gnome world for their contributions. Among others, they maintain a list of ppas that makes your desktop quite more friendly.

Nevertheless, for something so sensible, I tried something else. It is silly, but I found attractive the manual method, which is more troublesome because you need to be careful to install the same JDK version in your development machines. This is what I have not done and, as a result, need to recompile everything from time to time.

Being the developer, I find acceptable to have this issues myself. However, I suspect users of the IDK may not be that happy. So, while I find a stable configuration in my working places (candidate version 1.7_9), please, try to keep your JDK as updated as possible.