JVM without JRE

[redmoskito]

I'm a novice java programmer. I just posted my first applet to my
website and feedback tells me that the majority of people don't have
the necessary JVM to view it. I added a link to the page for the JRE
download at sun.com, but its 7 megabytes, hardly a practical download
for my dial-up clients. I've been trying to find out where to
download just the JVM without all the non-web aspects of the entire
JRE, but to no avail.

Am I missing something here? It looks to me as if Sun is trying to
prevent users from getting just the JVM. I'd prefer to use the Sun
JVM and not a third-party one, but if Sun won't allow me to solve this
problem with a smaller download, perhaps I will.

Any help would be immensely appreciated

 

[Roedy Green]

Am I missing something here? It looks to me as if Sun is trying to
prevent users from getting just the JVM.

The jvm can't do anything without at least the basic native classes.
You can't run a Java program without all kinds of classes like String,
Integer, ArrayList ...

What you could do is download the JRE (make sure you are getting the
10 MB JRE not the 38 MB JDK), and burn it on a CD, make copies and
mail them to your clients. see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jre.html
It may be illegal, but it is the only practical way to deal with
getting the JRE on machines without high speed internet access.

I remember in the early days of Java, when I lived on a small island,
trying to download the JDK by phone, and having it disconnect 3 hours
in, and I had to start over.

I have some ideas to help propagate files like the JRE. See
http://mindprod.com/projbulkfiledistributor.html

 

[Tim Tyler]

: What you could do is download the JRE (make sure you are getting the
: 10 MB JRE not the 38 MB JDK), and burn it on a CD, make copies and
: mail them to your clients. see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jre.html
: It may be illegal [...]

It isn't. Redistributing unmodified copies of the JRE is fine by Sun.

 

[Tim Tyler]

: Am I missing something here? It looks to me as if Sun is trying to
: prevent users from getting just the JVM.

That is pretty-much what it's trying to do.

If you want fewer libraries, I believe some earlier versions of the JRE
are still available.

 

[Darryl L. Pierce]

I'm a novice java programmer. I just posted my first applet to my
website and feedback tells me that the majority of people don't have
the necessary JVM to view it. I added a link to the page for the JRE
download at sun.com, but its 7 megabytes, hardly a practical download
for my dial-up clients. I've been trying to find out where to
download just the JVM without all the non-web aspects of the entire
JRE, but to no avail.

Can I ask why? Of what use is the JVM without the supporting classes?

Am I missing something here? It looks to me as if Sun is trying to
prevent users from getting just the JVM.

Not really. Rather, it seems that Sun hasn't bundled the JVM by itself
because, well, the JVM would be useless and there's apparently not enough
demand for just a JVM for them to do that.

I'd prefer to use the Sun
JVM and not a third-party one, but if Sun won't allow me to solve this
problem with a smaller download, perhaps I will.

What won't they allow? You can download the JRE and extract the JVM for
your own use. They don't provide it for probably the same reason Microsoft
doesn't put out VC++ without the standard C/C++ headers: who'd want it?