Running Java Software under Linux Debian Etch (November 2006)
Why this page
Some Software are writen in a program langage called Java. Eventhough these software are released as
free software, a Java interpreter is required for the software to be run. Sun distribute such a Java Interpreter, but it is not a Free Software. This problem is known as the
Java trap. This page describes an alternative to run software that require Java without using the Sun Java. This is, of course, a Free Software solution. This could become useless if Sun release a Free (GPL) version of Java.
I present here the way I managed to run Software distributed as .Jar files (Java) under Gnu Linux, without the Sun Java installed.
About Social Sciences
This procedure had not been tested on a wide range of Software. As a
sociologist, I am concerned with running Qualitative Data Analysis
Software (see my overview of
Free or
Proprietary projects). These
presentation is thus based on a limited experience, based only on
running the
Porphyry client
Unitex and
Squanto on a Debian distro.
Packages needed to execute a jar file are installed, under by the root (admin) user of the system with the following command.
apt-get install gij classpath java-gcj-compat java-gcj-compat-dev
It is quite possible than not all the dependent file are strictly needed (perhaps the development package are not strictly required)... but this allowed me not to worry too much... and to achieve my purpose, painless.
So, once packages are installed, you can launch, as a conventional user, the following line (replace the underlined name of the Jar package by the one you intend to run).
gij -jar package.jar
About Webstart Applications
Some software are provided as Webstart application, which is a .jnlp file launched directly from a webpage. The easier way I found to proceed is to download the .jnlp file. The content of the file can be read with any text editor. It mentions the emplacement of the required .jar file. While located, I download the .jar on my hard drive and launch it as indicated above. This is just a hack and is neither intended nor supposed to be a good practice.
This procedure is known to work with Porphyry and Unitex.
Et voilà !