I'm moving from windows to Linux. This is a daunting task to say the least. Most of the software I use everyday, I wrote myself. I want to rewrite that software in linux and I think that java is my best choice.

First, am I correct in assuming that my java programs will run in both windows and linux (I'm writing these for KDE, not command line)?

Second, I've never used java but am familiar with C++ and C#.

Now I just need a good, easy to use compiler.

Where can I get one?

Thanks!

Generally, yes. There might be some things that you need to be aware of, but I'm not sure. Java also has its own graphical toolkit called Swing that you can use, but I don't know about using Qt with Java.

You can get Sun's JDK from http://java.sun.com and the compiler is part of that. Your distribution may have its own package for the JDK, so you may want to check first.

If you are looking for and IDE, not just a command line compiler, there is a large choice of free ones for Java, I would recommend Sun Java Studio Creator or NetBeans.

Other choices are eclipse, BlueJ, JCreator and many others.

I looked at Sun Java Studio Creator, it says its for "Linux Redhat Fedora Core 3 Platform". I am on slackware, will it still work for me?

I also looked at netbeans the other day and it did nothing but confuse me.

Try Eclipse then:

www.eclipse.org

Read here just a few reasons why using Eclipse is a good idea. A programmer can be many times more productive using a powerful IDE as Eclipse, in my honest opinion. There are many other reasons for using Eclipse indeed. I've no experience with Sun Java Studio, but Netbeans is pretty awesome too. Remember to install JSK first. I think most IDE's will need J2SDK already installed in order to run.

If you find problems installing J2SDK, search this forum. I've answered that questions many times. There are good instructions at Sun's homepage as well.