Operating Systems and Java Versions

• Windows
• Unix
• Mac OS X
• VMS

jEdit 4.5 requires JRE 1.6 (aka Java 6) or later.

jEdit 4.3.3 is the last release to support Sun's JRE 1.5 (aka Java 5) or later.

What about OpenJDK?

OpenJDK 1.5 used to be problematic with jEdit 4.3, but so far, openjdk-6-jdk and openjdk-7-jdk both seem to run jEdit 4.5 on Linux without compatibility problems.

Windows/Linux

Oracle provides a 1.6 VM (aka 6 VM) for Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

IBM provides a 1.6 VM (aka 6 VM) for Linux, AIX, and OS/390. There may be some compatibility issues since are very few developers who test that platform.

Some Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu) used to have Sun's java in the "non-free" section of their repository to get packages like sun-java6-jdk. It may be installed in a place linked from /usr/lib/jvm/default-java. It is possible an older/different version of java is found first in your PATH. Therefore, it is important to choose the correct "default" version of java.

sh-3.1$ which java
/usr/bin/java
sh-3.1$ java -version
Oops, we don't want this version...
java version "1.4.2_11"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_11-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_11-b06, mixed mode)
sh-3.1$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk # or sun-java6-jdk, or default-jdk

Maybe it is already installed but not set up as the default java. To change the default version of java at any time, use update-alternatives.

$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There are 4 alternatives which provide `java'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
          2    /usr/bin/gij-wrapper-4.1
 +        3    /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java
*         4    /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

See this howto for more details about java alternatives.

Mac OS X

VMS

Java virtual machines for VMS on Alpha can be downloaded from HP; be sure to get the Java 1.6 (aka Java 6) version, and read and follow instructions about supported VMS versions and patches.