Contents

Installation of Available packages

Sun Java 1.6

For DebianEtch/Backports, Sun Java is now a package 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

See: http://www.olivierberger.com/weblog/index.php?post/2008/05/18/103-declaration-d-impots-sous-debian-testing-difficultes-mais-contournement-trouve (in french)

Sun Java 1.5

For DebianEtch, you will find Java 5 instead:

#apt-get install sun-java5-jdk

or the Java runtime environment

#apt-get install sun-java5-jre

Manual method (not recommended)

1) Go to the [J2RE] download page

2) Select the Linux self-extracting file

3) Save it to a suitable location (eg /tmp)

4) Move it to the path you want to run it from (eg. /usr/local )

#mv j2re* / usr/local/

and change to this directory:

#cd / usr/local

5) Run it - as root

#sh j2re-1_4_1_01-linux-i586.bin

6) This will prompt you for a licence agreement. Accept it

7) It will then create a folder j2re1.4.1_01/

8) Then, in your Mozilla plugin directory (eg / usr/local/mozilla/plugins) , symlink libjavaplugin_oji.so to the appropriate folder in the j2re folder created above

# cd /usr/local/mozilla/plugins
# ln -s /usr/local/j2re1.4.1_01/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so

9) Restart mozilla and test the install - eg go to http://news.bbc.co.uk

Other way, without plug-in browser installation

1) Download the latest JRE from http://java.sun.com

2) Install java-package and fakeroot

 apt-get install java-package fakeroot

3) Build a deb of the JRE using

 fakeroot make-jpkg <downloadedfilename>

4) Install the newly created .deb using

 dpkg -i <deb filename>

5) Install the debian-specific java bits

 [apt-get] install sun-j2re<yourversion>debian

By far the most time-consuming part of the process is going to be downloading the JRE and then waiting for the .deb to build. As long as you're not using dialup you should be able to have everything done in well under 30 mins.

Configure your default Java version

Sun recommends you update the alternatives system to have Sun's tools as the defult:

#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: