Java On Linux – Still A Disaster

Someone really needs to sort this out once and for all. It’s pretty simple to get Java installed so that you can run it – getting it installed so that the packaging system is satisfied that it’s there involves various bits of voodoo and integrating it so that you can use applets in Firefox is still a pain. Can we just decide on a standard location for the plugin file so that it can be auto-installed, or maybe even just a standard config file that tells the JRE installer where the Firefox plugin directory is?

Of course, none of this would help me since Sun decided not to include the plugin with the AMD64 build of the JRE. Why the heck not?

Sigh.