java popularity in desktop computers in numbers or %

General Discussions
#1

are there in internet some data about (or you have some informations about it):

  • how many computers have installed java virtual machine for example in % for windows, linux, max, solaris

  • what version of jre is most popular (i think that jre 1.4 … but maybe other)

  • sun policy for jre on desktop computers in distributing java for example : does sun has some special agreement with computer manufactures like dell , compaq etc so they preinstall jre for that computers in that way (becouse i heard that real media has such agreements with some companis to distribute their real player , especialy when windows media player was added directly to win system so maybe have sun too), i also read somwhere that java was aded in service pack for windows xp (sun was judging with microsoft so they were force to add it), but will it be added in that way in the future ?

#2

I tried to get some “formal” numbers for the folks here, but have not been able to get an accurate percentage. Roughly, 70% of all new PCs are shipping with current Java.

-Chris

#3

In Sept. last year my Dell arrived with Java 1.4.2_03

#4

100% of Macs that run OSX have Java 8)

(Thats an easy one, it ships with OSX.)

#5

IIRC, Ubuntu Linux has 1.4.2 per default, but that will likely change in April with the next release.

#6

70% in general 100% in linux and mac, wow that is much more than i thought

#7

I’m running Ubuntu 5.10 “The Breezy Badger” and SUN’s Java isn’t on the DVD, though there are respositories you can manually add to the apt sources, offering blackdown’s 1.4 and sun’s 14. and 1.5.

It is a challenge for the Java Linix community not to get overun by Mono, because te next releases of ubuntu and even fedora core will include it in their base packages… (Of course I do not have to mention Novell’s SUSE, because Novell is the driving power behind Mono.)

#8

We have little to fear from Mono. It exists largely to satisfy a very small minority of die-hard open source freaks; however, as Sun are doing an exemplary job of supporting Linux with the JDK anyway, only a very anal tech nerd is going to bet the farm on Mono. As a senior executive in a hi-tech company now, I tend to hedge my bets with safe options rather than crazy nerd ideas. Java the platform is like Mono squared. There’s no comparison.

The figure on the desktop on the other hand is quite misleading. That 60-70% figure bandied around is for the US, and one must also remember that new PCs account for approximately 20% of machines in current use or thereabouts with a 5 year turnaround cycle. So you’re looking at waiting a good few years yet before it makes any impact on Windows. Unlike Vista, which I believe will have .net built in will it not…? Giving it an immediate 50% advantage in distribution…

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

ubuntu comes with the gnu gij interpreter, wich is behind sun’s jvm in performance :frowning:

#10

I agree, that mono’s performance is FAR behind SUN’s VM, but the ‘free’ VMs, which are shipped with most Linux boxes, aren’t faster. Don’t underestimate the GNU community, they tend to prefer ‘FREE’ over performance, that’s why the mono project was created… (and project classpath, kaffe, …)

Actually, I use three 3 desktop applications regularly (Beagle - search enigne, F-Spot - Photo-Managing, Banshee - music player), the only Java desktop I often run is my IDE (netbeans) - O.k. I’ll count OpenOffice as a half Java applcation, but still mono is twice as present for me.
Furter, mono is a .NET clone and so, one also had to start comparing .NET desktop apps on windows, with java ones… (how about anyone using windows, which Java/.NET desktop apps are you using?)

Don’t get me wrong, IMHO the Java language is much more sophisticated than C# and I have no problem with non-free, with free like freedom, applications. Further, I really appriciate sun’s effort for the linux plattform. :slight_smile:

@cas: please tell the Novell guys and especially Gnome’s Miguel de Icaza, that they are anal tech nerds. - don’t let us start flaming…

#11

Hehe :slight_smile: From a management and responsibility perspective though I’d be crazy to go near mono, or even one of the free VMs, when Sun’s stuff is grade A brilliant and 100% free too. Open source isn’t the cure for all ills! We just want stuff that’s guaranteed to work.

What might be stopping Sun from coming to an arrangement with Microsoft to ship the JVM in Vista? After all, Apple has managed to do it…

Cas :slight_smile:

#12

I don’t run a single .Net application. I’ve never even seen one as far as I know.
Java stuff I run: NetBeans, Eclipse, jEdit, Azureus, games that you guys post, my company’s applications, little things that I write, Ultratron, Tribal Trouble,…

Just upgraded my Linux partition yesterday…

Linux can still safely be ignored IMHO. The user experience on Linux is horrible. It is still not a viable alternative on the home desktop. Why? Because the most basic things like graphics and sound don’t work out of the box and the default installs shove tons of very crappy apps that clutter up your drive and your start menu.
Graphics problems:

  • display always defaults to some asinine odd-ball frequency and the image is shifted to the side half off the monitor
  • the display is not hte native resolution of the LCD display, despite installing the Linu specific crap from the monitor CD
  • Changing the display resolution with the provided graphical UI does not work, choosing the native LCD resolution picked another odd-ball refresh frequency, picking something lower changed to a totally unrelated resoution like 754x??? when I choose 1024x768
  • Changing back to the LCD native res did not work
  • Picking a random resolution (totally wrong numbers) finally changed to the native LCD resolution with the correct refresh rate. When asked “do you want to keep this setting?” I quickly pick yes because I have no idea if I will ever be able to get it again.

Sound problems:

  • Sound either doesn’t work at all, or must be started manually every time I boot.
  • latest update seemed to fix that, but then no sound worked in Java. (even though I specifically installed some advanced linux sound architecture thing for java).

How many web browsers do you need to install? I’m only going to use FireFox.
How many IM clients? Do any of them work? Tried GAIM but it kept disconnecting for no reason. Most that I have used screw-up the status so others think you are online when you aren’t (present when ‘away’).
How many media players are you going to install? I’m just going to go out an get VLC since it has a hope of working and the other ones that are installed rarely play anything.
Why install AbiWord when I’m only ever going to run OpenOffice?
Why are all the desktop fonts so huge? There goes my screen space.

There is just so much CRAP installed and the package manager stuff is far too overwhelming for a home user. Not to mention the “package hell” that is far worse than the DLL hell of Windows ever was. Try to install anything and there is a 50% chance that you will run into. Remember that I’m a techie… I have some hope in hell of figuring to the problems or making sane choices when deciding what to install… for a average user there is no hope at all.
I speak from years of experience with Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Linux is the worst of all by a long shot. Windows is a ways behind OS X. All of them have their stupid quirks that just make you wonder what the designers/developers were thinking.

Linux has a long way to go. Those “open source freaks” have their work cut out for them.

So I’m not worried about Mono at all, mainly because it has no viable platform to run on. Do people really think it will ever be compatible with any .Net stuff? (There is no way that Microsoft will allow it.) Why would I use it when I have Java?

#13

That’s pretty much the key thing about .net in the first place - why, when I’ve got Java?

Cas :slight_smile:

#14

shipping and working is somthing else fendora is well… messy.

#15

Hmm okay, I thought it was a Sun JDK. Must have forgotten since I updated it right away.

swpalmer

<flameon>

Sorry for going off topic.

It looks like you picked an unfortunate distribution. When I installed linux on my desktop computer as well as my laptop, the optimal monitor resolutions were picked right away. Sound, network (including wireless, unlike in windows where it doesn’t yet but might do if I mess more around with the supplied drivers though I have already installed them once) worked immediately. Synaptic package manager works like a charm, so I don’t have to find millions of programs manually. Also it takes up somewhat less space than e.g. a windows install, but somehow there are so many more useful programs installed already. In a related matter, I don’t see the problems regarding lots of equivalent programs being installed. There is one web browser (FF), one IM (GAIM), one office environment (OO). The distribution I’m using is Ubuntu 5.10. I don’t mean to advertise, but I’m tired of seeing a good system being held back because ‘no one uses it anyway’. THEY DO! :slight_smile:

There are lots irritating issues as well, I won’t deny that. But I’ve seen nothing like that which you described. I won’t engage in a long flamewar now, these are just experiences :slight_smile:

#16

hehe, funny… I’m also using Ubuntu 5.10 and the description by Ask_Hjorth_Larsen totally matches my experience. :slight_smile:

Cas, your perfectly right, there is no need for .NET… and Java is surely more sophisticated… but have you seen Pirates of Silicion Valley? One of my favorite scenes near the end, right after Steve Jobs realizes that Microsoft has ‘stolen’ (eh, copied, cloned or whatever) their graphical OS, is:

Steve Jobs: We’re better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don’t get it, Steve. That doesn’t matter!

#17

Hey… I’m happy to be told it was because I was using a crappy distribution. I figured SuSE should have been decent, but I’m open minded, that’s why I keep giving Linux another chance every few months (hoping to find a usable version).

I have just finished downloading Ubuntu for both PPC and Intel and I will give it a try. I see that the download is much smaller and perhaps that means they’ve culled out a lot of the junk. It also uses Gnome and I was using KDE on SuSE.

I probably should have waited until April given the statement above that the new version should be out then… ah well.

#18

Someone whould have big problems with hardware and software, others would come and everything works properly.

Be nice to computers and don’t forget to care about them. When did you removed dust from inside of case? Have you checked computer parts recently? What about silver, or gold silicon paste on CPU?

Only problem that I had with debian was refusal of aquirement of graphic device. I didn’t installed Java libraries in administrator mode, so it might be the problem. (And of course a second problem with no authomatic CPU cooling on idle.)

#19

you have no idea how much truth is in that.

#20

I am replying from Ubuntu, booted from a ‘Live’ DVD…

Display is shifted to the right by about 16 pixels… (on my LCD). Why can no linux distribution do what Mac OS X and Windows can and simply get the display right?

Ok, pressed some buttons on the monitor to force it to lock to this weird graphics clock. I know have a stable display, but I shouldn’t have to configure my monitor every time I boot :slight_smile:

Right away I see that the font size used for the GUI is much more reasonable than I had with SuSE+KDE, that’s good. And I heard the ‘login’ sound, so audio is working at some level… I’m about to try Java…

Ah… Java… it’s not available. Just went to puppygames.net and I see a “click here to download plugin” message where the space invaders applet should be. I’ve been through that before… manual installation of that plugin was a major pain on SuSE…

The stripped down install without all the junk is good though… I may replace my SuSE installation with this. But of course the subject of the whole thread is about Java being available and in this case it isn’t. You guys said that 1.4.2 came with Ubuntu… I can only assume that it is either not available when booting from the DVD in Live mode or that it must be downloaded during the full install procedure or something.

Now I will do the obvious and “Click here to install the plugin” … I’m bettig it won’t work. I was right… after firefox did nothing it stated:

[quote]Firefox finished installing the missing plugins:
Java Runtime Environment Not Available (Manual Install) <–a button
Firefox needs to be restarted for thge plugins to work.
[/quote]
Pathetic. (And mostly the fault of Firefox, I know.)

For some reason I don’t have access to my existing NTFS or Linux partions when booted from this DVD. I’ll let them have that as a security precaution or something… but it sure makes evaulating Ubuntu by booting from the DVD hard.

So far I can conclude that Ubuntu has addressed some of the minor issues I had with SuSE… (e.g. less junk installed, better font sizes,etc) but it looks like I need to do a proper install to truly evaluate it.