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by thesuperbigfrog 2408 days ago
You can have multiple JVMs or JDKs installed, and therefore the need to change environment variables depending on your use cases, but I was referring to Java being part of the operating system in the same way that Python is part of some operating systems, for example several Linux distributions (Fedora, RHEL, and practically all derivatives).
1 comments
int_19h 2408 days ago
Isn't it still just a package on Red Hat distros? A base system package, granted, because some system tools are written in Python.

But in any case, it just becomes one more version of Python to consider. If you're already dealing with multiple versions, what difference does it make?

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thesuperbigfrog 2408 days ago
It is "just a package" in the sense that there are RPMs for Python, but many system management tools are Python scripts that assume you have Python and specific Python libraries installed so that everything will run correctly.

If you have root privileges and you run "sudo pip" commands you might accidentally break the specific Python dependencies that the system scripts rely on. See https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel...

There's no issue with using the system Python, but any Python packages should be installed via yum or similar Red Hat / Fedora tools and not pip.

Note that the newer versions of RHEL have created developer-specific tool packages to separate the system packages from developer packages. This allows the developer packages to get upgraded quickly so developers have nee, shiny tools without breaking the compatibility that the base system needs to keep running.

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