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

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Tue Jul 14 08:05:14 MDT 2009


steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> writes:
> Nathan O'Sullivan wrote on 10/7/09 12:13 PM:
>
>> Mono has been in the news a bit recently, and I don't want to rehash that
>> topic.
>>
>> I'm not involved in the Java world, but perhaps someone here is. Why do you
>> think Java has not taken off for Linux Desktop apps? What needs to happen
>> for it to do so?
>
> I think you've come up with a *great* question, demonstrated by the activity
> & length of the thread. Well Done!
>
> What surprised me, in my ignorance, is the apparent lack of scripting
> languages used to write GUI-apps in the Linux/X-11 world. [We heard from one
> person with a significant Perl codebase]

Actually, that is a significant web application; the topic had somewhat
drifted.  We do have some GUI applications in Perl, though, including on
Windows.  Mostly, we use a web application and embedded Firefox[1] now,
though, to deliver a "desktop" application.

That said, there is a substantial amount of Python in the Ubuntu developed
space, and a non-trivial amount of Perl through Debian as a whole,
contributing to the GUI space.

Also notable, all the desktop environments along with a suite of other tools
are making development using HTML, CSS and JavaScript more accessible, leading
to more small tools being built in scripting languages.

Oh, and Ruby.  I almost forgot Ruby, which is quite popular in the GUI
application space these days, probably because it is generally the new
hotness.[2]

[...]

> Since then, we've had at least Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt arrive in the Posix
> world. Entirely new things built from scratch.
>
> So how did 'we' (the FOSS community) skip developing descendants/competitors
> to Tcl/Tk???

TCL is more or less Lisp based on strings rather than on pairs; the GTK and Qt
toolkits interfaced to various languages are more or less the equivalent of
TCL/Tk when you get down to it.

> Or is it "Javascript"/ECMAScript??  [IIRC, Thunderbird is extended with
> Javascript]

Technically, Thunderbird and Firefox are XUL applications built in an XML and
JavaScript environment, so yes, they probably count.  There is substantial C
in there, though.

> Just to demonstrate the depth & breadth of my ignorance, what 'scripting'
> languages are used in the Microsoft world to write GUI-Apps?
>
> Does "Visual Basic" qualify?  "Windows Power Shell" does amazing stuff (I'm
> told), but I don't know if it enables/supports GUI-Apps.

Personally, I gave up on the scripting language vs non-scripting language
distinction a while back, because it is no longer meaningful.

After all, many "scripting" languages compile into native code these days, or
offer comparable features to the "non-scripting" languages.  How can you tell
which is which any more?

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  I think they call it "prism" these days.

[2]  I would say "until people notice how all the features they claim make
     them better than the competition are terrible lies", but that would be my
     distaste for the language showing through. ;)

-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
               ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons


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