Sun, Canonical Integrate Java, GlassFish, and NetBeans into Ubuntu

Published: April 19, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server maker Sun Microsystems might think that its Solaris version of Unix is the greatest operating system on the planet, but the company is also practical enough to know that Linux is ascending and driving a lot of server iron these days. The company is also savvy enough to have made best friends with Canonical, the commercial force behind the Ubuntu variant of Linux. So there is little surprise that the two announced that Ubuntu 7.04, the new Linux release announced this week by Canonical, will be the first Linux variant to offer an integrated set of Java development tools.

Linux developers have been using Java tools all along, of course, but when Sun began the process of taking Java open source under the GNU General Public License last November, it opened the door for Linux distributors, who are bound by various licenses in the way they co-mingle code, to actually start embedding Java and related technologies developed by Sun within their distros.

Ubuntu 7.04, as the new release is called, comes in desktop and server flavors, is distributed freely and is open source (obviously), and with for-fee tech support from Canonical. This release has been updated in a number of ways, including support for the Linux 2.6.20 kernel, multicore chips, and a number of virtualization technologies. The Java tools that have been integrated with Ubuntu 7.04 include the GlassFish V1 application server (an open source implementation of the Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 application server), the Java Platform Standard Edition (JDK 6), the Java DB 10.2 (which is also known as Apache Derby, and the NetBeans integrated development environment. These tools are available through Canonical's Multiverse online repository, and can be installed with a few clicks of the mouse.

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's founder and the head honcho at Canonical, the company was only expecting to get the Java and GlassFish code integrated, but exceeded expectations and got the NetBeans IDE in as well in time for the Ubuntu 7.04 release. Ubuntu already supports the open source Eclipse IDE and is not going to play favorites between the two.

"The key goal," according to Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian Linux variant upon which Ubuntu is itself derived and the new chief operating systems officer at Sun, which hired him a month ago to do that job, "is to make Sun's Java technology more accessible to the developer community. It is my hope that these packages will eventually migrate into Debian."

Sun is also clearly hoping that by aligning itself with Canonical and its Ubuntu Linux, it can embrace Linux without helping Red Hat, the largest Linux distributor and serious threat to displacing Unixes of all kinds in the data center of the world. Red Hat controls a Linux variant, clustering software, a global file system, a very popular middleware stack, and is working to get an integrated set of open source development tools hammered out after one acquisition (JBoss) and one assumption of control over an open source toolset (Exadel). Helping Ubuntu puts pressure on Red Hat, since developers just want to crank out code and their bosses, the IT managers, want to do so in the least expensive way possible. And when these companies grow up and need a rugged system with enterprise-class support, Sun will be right there, offering to support its Java software stack. It is better to have your software stack running on Linux than it is not running at all, but it is better still--at least from Sun's point of view--that it not be running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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