[clug] Why isn't Java popular on the Linux Desktop? [SEC=PERSONAL]

[Sam Couter]

Roppola, Antti - BRS <Antti.Roppola at daff.gov.au> wrote:
> My $0.02 on possible reasons:
> 
>  - I suspect that there are still lingering perceptions of performance
> (that may or may not be justified)

Depending on your use case, they are sometimes justified. The Java VM has
a huge start-up cost, and once it's running it demands quite a bit of
memory compared to a native application.

The most popular Java GUI toolkit is Swing, which has a reputation for
being unresponsive. It's much better than it used to be, but it can't
yet match the snappiness of a well-coded native application. SWT
promises to fix that, and Java bindings for the GTK toolkit exist.

>  - People still held fears about proprietary interests in the base
> platform (like Mono)

I don't think these fears are valid anymore, but there's a lot of
inertia to overcome.

>  - The existing body of FOSS is already heavily comitted to other
> platforms and people stick with the familiar

Also, Java just isn't seen as a "cool" language. It's seen as a bulky,
stodgy enterprise-only language that's no fun. Python and Perl get all
the girls.
-- 
Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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