Installation of Available packages
Sun Java 1.6
For DebianLenny and DebianSqueeze Sun Java is available in non-free. Either install the Java development kit:
#apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
or the Java runtime environment
#apt-get install sun-java6-jre
sun-java6-plugin could be installed to active JVM in your Web browser like iceweasel
Sun Java 1.5
For DebianLenny Java 5 is available:
#apt-get install sun-java5-jdk
or the Java runtime environment
#apt-get install sun-java5-jre
Configure your default Java version
Sun recommends you update the alternatives system to have Sun's tools as the default:
#update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun
Or for java 5:
#update-java-alternatives -s java-1.5.0-sun
The state of GPL Java(from Sun)
What is the status of getting a Sun Java implementation into Debian? Sun GPL'ed their Java sources under the name OpenJDK. Some 4% are missing from the sources, for which Sun has not the copyright themselves.
They provide "binary plugs" for these, and the "icedtea" project is able to build the gpl openjdk7 to a fully working and gpl only java implementation.
There is a big effort on packaging this OpenJDK for Debian.
It's coordinated at the debian-java mailing list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/
Some up to date information, fresh from debconf was available at these talks:
(there should be videos available at some point in time!)
See Also
See also: Java