"
There are obviously problems with some of the newer versions of the shared
libraries, when it comes to compiling nsjava (and also getting it to work!) on
versions of Linux beyond whatever version of the kernel RedHat 6.2 employs. As
has been suggested in this forum, the problems are mostly related to pthreads,
I believe."
It's true that there are problems with pthreads libraries and nsjava, but it is really just a symptom of a bigger problem with running pre-compiled programs on linux. It seems that vendors such as sun, idm, and blackdown compile their jdk's against one distrubution and distribute it as a "linux jdk". I haven't been able to verify if it's true or not, but I believe they compile their jdk's using redhat, so in general (except for sun) their jdk's work well on redhat machines, but otherwise, there are problems with library compatiblity like pthreads when trying to use the jdk's on other linux distros. The debacle that is redhat 7.0 has aggravated this problem because they released 7.0 using a non-released version of gcc. As a result, libraries compiled for redhat 7.0 are not compatible with other distros that use standard released versions of gcc for compilation.
I've found the whole situation fustrating, and I understand, despite claims to the contrary, why java has not become popular on linux. As long as java remains closed-source, the situation probably will not change. Sun seems determined to maintain tight control over java until .net supercedes it, and it fades into obscurity.
