On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:01 PM, geoffrey mendelson <geoffreymendel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are > most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, > or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/<name> to them. Then it links > /usr/bin/<name> to /etc/alternatives/<name>. Most distros do that, e.g., Red Hat and Fedora do the same. IIRC, the "alternatives" system originates from Debian, and was originally invented to deal with multiple versions of perl. For java it is even more essential, since just about every application comes with its own JVM and cannot work with anything else (so much for portability), so you typically have several JVMs on a machine. At the same time, you need a default. The "alternatives" system is meant to make switching between versions easier. I wouldn't consider it an Ubuntu-specific feature, and by now it is probably a feature, not a bug. ;-) -- Oleg Goldshmidt | o...@goldshmidt.org _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
