BrokenBlog

Maybe it’s my trust of open-source friendly yet proprietary companies, but when I use Java, I want it from Sun, not an open-source knock-off. For all the highlights of the open-source philosophy, there are times when something open-source is clearly inferior, at least at a specific moment in time. GIJ is a Java runtime that seems compatible, but makes Java dirt slow. Alternatives are still good for everybody in the end, so GIJ doesn’t offend me, but in Ubuntu’s Feisty repository, GIJ is required to run Eclipse. It’s maddening, it makes Eclipse run at a fraction of the speed, but to uninstall it is to uninstall Eclipse. At least until the people at Ubuntu notice this.

For now I can only offer a solution that shouldn’t need to exist. Make sure the package “sun-java6-jre” is installed, then add the line “/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun” is to the top of the file “/etc/eclipse/java_home” as root. Afterwards, Eclipse should be almost… too fast.