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Canonical is removing Sun Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Anonymous
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Canonical is removing Sun Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

I don't know how I missed this announcement, and only discovered it yesterday when trying to get the new BT speedtester to work - see forum thread http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,102515.msg870300.html#msg870300
From http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-sun-java-6-in-ubuntu-11-10-using-ppa.html
Quote
Canonical no longer have permission to redistribute new Java packages as Oracle has retired the “Operating System Distributor License for Java”.
- Oracle has published an advisory about security issues in the version of Java currently in the partner archive. Some of these issues are currently being exploited in the wild.
- Due to the severity of the security risk, Canonical released a security update for the Sun JDK browser plugin which disables the plugin on all machines.
- In the near future, Canonical will remove all Sun JDK packages from the Partner archive. This will be accomplished by pushing empty packages to the archive, so that the Sun JDK will be removed from all users machines when they do a software update. Users of these packages who have not migrated to an alternative solution will experience failures after the package updates have removed Oracle Java from the system.

then from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Canonical-Removes-Java-from-Ubuntu-on-February-16-247177.shtml
Quote
Canonical is preparing to remove the Sun JDK (Java Development Kit) packages from the software repositories, starting with February 16th, 2012, affecting Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 11.04.
Users should not be worried, as Canonical will NOT remove the Java packages from their systems! They will be removed ONLY from the software repository and no future updates will be applied to them.
However, for new installations, the Sun JDK packages will no longer be available, as they will be removed from the partner archive

and from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Canonical-Will-Remove-Java-From-Ubuntu-241147.shtml
Quote
Canonical also suggest that all users have to migrate to OpenJDK as soon as possible, in order to avoid system failures. Installing icedtea6-plugin for the web browser, and openjdk-6-jdk or openjdk-6-jre for the virtual machine will solve the problem.

which is the exact opposite of what I have done because the new BT speedtester is not compatible with "icedtea6" and "openjdk6" - D'Oh!  Angry
Having spent a few hours now looking for a trusted alternative PPA for "sun-java6" (so I can automatically pickup the latest security updates),  it looks like "sun-java7" isn't quite ready for widespread deployment (http://java.com/en/download/faq/java7.xml), and the currently recommended version is "Version 6 Update 30" while available for direct download and installation from http://java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp?locale=en, looks like work in progress for alternative PPA scripts to be deployed in the Ubuntu "Software Sources".
13 REPLIES 13
ejs
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

I never had any trouble with the previous BT speedtester with Fedora's java-1.6.0-openjdk and the icedtea plugin, but I do note that it now crashes firefox with a not particularly helpful assertion failed error message:
Assertion failure: rt->onOwnerThread(), at /builddir/build/BUILD/xulrunner-10.0/mozilla-release/js/src/jsapi.cpp:6316
I have the java plugin disabled usually, and only enable it when I want to run a java applet, which is almost never.
Edit: I don't think the problem is with the icedtea java plugin itself, but how firefox interacts with it (the crash refers to firefox's multithreaded javascript code). I can load the speedtester page using a webkit based web browser, but it's not a good time for me to actually run a speedtest.
ejs
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Here's a workaround to stop Firefox crashing. Fedora 16 with icedtea-web plugin and java-1.6.0-openjdk.
Go to about:config, find the setting dom.ipc.plugins.java.enabled and set it to true.
This enables the plugin-container "out of process" plugin thing for java, it appears to have been disabled by default for the java plugin.
VileReynard
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

That fix works for Firefox 10.0.1 in Mint - however the fault seems to lie with BT not generating proper certificates...

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

HairyMcbiker
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

I believe they have changed their minds (again) see <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/01/canonical-reverse-java-uninstall-decision/">here</a>  dated January 19, 2012. they previously posed that they were removing it. (not that it bothers me one way or the other as I use Mint  ;D)
Anonymous
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Out of interest, which version of Sun Java does Mint have in it's repository ? - The only 'safe' version is 6 with update 30.
VileReynard
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

I think Mint comes with Sun java - but I've also got Open Java loaded, so it works in the browser.
To be quite honest, Java has grown to be a huge monster, full of bugs.
Luckily, only a couple of sites bother to use it - because it's very slow too.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

HairyMcbiker
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

M11 has Java 6/26 Haven't checked M12, not even booted it recently  :-\.
ejs
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Quote from: purleigh
Quote
Users should not be worried, as Canonical will NOT remove the Java packages from their systems! They will be removed ONLY from the software repository and no future updates will be applied to them.


Shouldn't they be worried that Ubuntu were going to leave them with an unsupported version of Java that wouldn't receive any updates?
ejs
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Quote from: Hairy
I believe they have changed their minds (again) see <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/01/canonical-reverse-java-uninstall-decision/">here</a>  dated January 19, 2012. they previously posed that they were removing it.

I have attempted to track down the primary source for the announcement, and I don't see anything later reversing any decision. So they are dumping users with a version of Java that will end up out of date and insecure, if people don't do anything about removing or replacing it. Presumably they will rely on Firefox nagging them about it when their java becomes out of date.
VileReynard
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Quote
The IcedTea-Web project provides a Free Software web browser plugin running applets written in the Java programming language and an implementation of Java Web Start, originally based on the NetX project.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

ejs
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Re: Canonical is removing Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

Oh right, I forgot that they already dealt with the plugin.
Anonymous
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Re: Canonical is removing Sun Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

I found a similar Sun Java discussion in the Linux Mint forum - http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=84193
Anonymous
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Re: Canonical is removing Sun Java from Ubuntu on 16th February 2012 !

If you wish to continue using the superior Oracle/Sun Java-6 implementation with the latest updates, then I have had success (on Ubuntu 10.10, 11.04 & 12.04) using the following instructions -
Java - Ubuntu Community Documentation
and
Flexiodotorg Java-6 updater
  Cool