IcedTea 1.3 Picks Up New Features, Support

Back during JavaOne 2007, Sun Microsystems had released the fully open-source OpenJDK that effectively made Java a free software language. Just weeks after that Red Hat announced the IcedTea project. IcedTea is OpenJDK but mixed in is some of the code from the GNU Classpath plus other changes. While the IcedTea efforts were led by Red Hat, distributions such as Ubuntu have adopted it for their free software Java stack. Today IcedTea 1.3 was released.

IcedTea 1.3 contains not only the latest OpenJDK code but other improvements too. IcedTea now uses Gervill, various Netx fixes, LiveConnect Java/JavaScript support, JavaScript->Java security, VisualVM tool integration, CACAO support, experimental Shark JIT, improved crypto support, Mozilla Rhino JavaScript integration support, support for Zero builds on new architectures, and a variety of build and bug fixes. Gervill is the new Java generic sound synthesizer. Another big addition to IcedTea 1.3 is PulseAudio support.

The release announcement for IcedTea 1.3 can be read on the OpenJDK mailing list.