Ha! Fixed.
Despite the Mozilla Foundation telling you to install the Java Runtime like this:
su root
password: yourrootpasswordhere
cd /usr/java/
chmod x+a jre-6u5-linux-i585-rpm.bin
/home/yourusername/Desktop/jre-6u5-i586-linux.rpm.bin
It won’t work. But if you follow the rest of these instructions it should. Assuming you want Java in a directory called /usr/java/ and you downloaded the thing to desktop by default, that is. Read the EULA, press space to scroll, type yes at the prompt.
rpm -iv ./jre-6u5-i586-linux.rpm
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_05/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
Now, going by the official documentation, you would think this was time to restart the browser and call it a day. But it won’t work. So you need to:
cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_05/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
Now it will. Does anyone think this could be more user friendly?
I installed JRE on my Xubuntu 7.07 last week. Using apt-get install in a terminal I got to the Sun license agreement and I couln’t get past the OK – neither Enter nor a mouse click would work. So ran it though the Synaptic Package Manager and Enter on the license OK worked fine – strange.