From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 30 20:38:14 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id UAA01245 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 30 Nov 1995 20:38:14 -0800 Received: from hoover.stanford.edu (hoover.Stanford.EDU [36.33.0.99]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id UAA01216 for ; Thu, 30 Nov 1995 20:38:03 -0800 Received: from HOOVER.STANFORD.EDU by HOOVER.STANFORD.EDU (PMDF V4.3-10 #13307) id <01HY9MH8O0DC005IEM@HOOVER.STANFORD.EDU>; Thu, 30 Nov 1995 20:37:53 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 20:37:53 -0800 (PST) From: Annelise Anderson Subject: Java for FreeBSD? To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-id: <01HY9MH8OJO2005IEM@HOOVER.STANFORD.EDU> X-VMS-To: IN%"freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" X-VMS-Cc: ANDRSN MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Given the BusinessWeek Dec. 4 cover story, "The Software Revolution," I am curious about whether Java will soon become available for FreeBSD. A port is apparently not a trivial matter. However, there seem to be quite a few operating systems for which Java is available, including Solaris, HP-UX (at least soon), the Mac (before too long), and Windows 95 and Windows NT. And Microsoft is trying to develop Visual Basic as a competitor to Java (called Blackbird, supposedly will be ready January 96). Support for Java applets (Hot Java) is also available in the latest beta releases of Netscape for several platforms--not sure if FreeBSD is covered in any of these. Meanwhile supposedly a Linux prerelease port of the Java Developers Kit is available on ftp://substance.blackdown.org/pub/Java/linux-- there's also a pointer to this location at http://www-lf.eb.com/~tdarugar/java.html, which explains the installation process, necessary libraries, etc. An "elm" distribution is necessary. At this point I'm talking about things I don't understand, so please forgive me. It just seems Java is a focus of competition and new developments and that it's therefore important that it be available for FreeBSD, lest people turn to other platforms and/or operating systems. Annelise