Common problems with Ubuntu

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:01 PM, geoffrey mendelson
<geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are
> most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name,
> or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/<name> to them. Then it links
> /usr/bin/<name> to /etc/alternatives/<name>.

Most distros do that, e.g., Red Hat and Fedora do the same. IIRC, the
"alternatives" system originates from Debian, and was originally
invented to deal with multiple versions of perl. For java it is even
more essential, since just about every application comes with its own
JVM and cannot work with anything else (so much for portability), so
you typically have several JVMs on a machine. At the same time, you
need a default. The "alternatives" system is meant to make switching
between versions easier.

I wouldn't consider it an Ubuntu-specific feature, and by now it is
probably a feature, not a bug. ;-)

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | oleg at goldshmidt.org