Are there reliable alternatives to Sun's JVM for desktop & enterprise development?

Question

With the recent announcements from Oracle side, we have started to work on a plan for phasing out migration from the Sun JVM to the whatever reliable and free alternative we

Answer 1

You can download the IBM JVM off their website. The question is really around support and whether you have IBM products in your env (IBM JVM support comes bundled with another product).

The IBM JVM has enhancements that the Sun JVM doesn't have like 128bit encryption, and enhanced JavaEE features. Read this paper to get an understanding of their mods - http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/600cc5649e2871db852568150060213c/7d71c18820edabeb85256bfa00685e4b!OpenDocument

Answer 2

IBM's JDK runs on Linux (it's tested on SuSE and Red Hat) on x86 and x86-64 processors. I don't believe it's restricted to IBM hardware; i don't think it has to be a Linux virtualized on a 390.

However, i have absolutely no idea whether support is available for it on non-IBM platforms. If you're planning to use it in production, you will probably need a support agreement of some sort, even if it's just to keep the suits happy.

Answer 3

If it is any help, I run OpenJDK in production now, it's been pretty stable. (I was originally running Sun JVM, but there is a long-overdue bug that was crashing my app, so I had to switch.)

Answer 4

Try JRokit. It is expected to be the fastest one.