NetBeans, Java, linux x86_64: some light, and a very dark shadow.
After hestitating to do so for quite a while, by now I finally got along installing my working notebook using the 64bit enabled version of xubuntu 7.10 ‘gutsy gibbon’, and I have to report that most of the things moved along rather smoothly. The system works again, does run rather smoothly, not slower than it did before (actually some applications – like the virtualization stuff allowing me to run, well, “other” OSses once in a while if really needed – “feel” a little faster than before).
So far, so good. Well, except for one thing perhaps, which leaves me rather irritated: Though there actually is a native Java version for amd64, also allowing me to immediately move along working with NetBeans on my newly installed machine, the amd64 build of Suns Java distribution obviously doesn’t come with a browser plugin, which is not really a good thing if you’re into creating applets once in a while. Browsing the web I found numerous hints on how to get over this limitation (including installing the IBM Blackdown java package or advices on how to downgrade my browser to be 32bit again and merrily use the old plugins), but no real evidence of being capable of simply plugging one of my installed JDKs to my Firefox 2 browser on this platform like I used to do before.
Even worse, I found this issue report against Sun JDK requesting 64-bit plugin support, an enhancement request that, well, celebrated its 5th birthday yesterday without having a viable solution available now or in near future. Given that JDK 6 Update N is likely to come with an all-refurbished Java plugin, knowing that, five years later, there still is no support for a platform more than common nowadays is rather frustrating. Somehow, Sun people haven’t really outdone theirselves about that. By now, I will evaluate a bunch of other solutions (including the 32bit browser and the icedtea-java7-plugin package that comes with Ubuntu amd64 but so far causes stacktraces on my system), but in the end it’s more than likely I’ll be back to 32bit – caused by an issue someone has failed to address the last five years… Did I mention that official JDK7 pre-release builds for linux-amd64 also suffer from this flaw? Simply disastrous…