Fedora 21 Will Likely Make Java 8 The Default Runtime

The latest Fedora 21 feature being talked about that will likely happen for this next Linux distribution release is shipping Java 8 as the default Java run-time environment.

Proposed last week was the feature of Java 8 for Fedora 21. This feature comes down to packaging up and shipping java-1.8.0-openjdk in Fedora 21. Part of this feature that's making it contentious among Fedora stakeholders is that OpenJDK/Java 7 will be obsoleted and removed.

While this feature was proposed last week and seems rather basic seeing as Oracle released Java 8 this month and it adds many new features, there's Fedora users and developers not wanting to see OpenJDK 7 go quite yet as they are dependent upon that version or have other reasons for using the older version.

On the other side, Fedora maintainers want to eliminate this older version of Java in Fedora 21 since Oracle plans to end-of-life its support in H1'2015 while F21 is still being maintained. Those wishing to read up on the drama over the past week about Java 8 in Fedora 21 can read this mailing list thread.

Fedora 21 is getting queued up with many new features and updates and is being planned for release in October (or November in case of delays) this year.