What a pain.

According to the mozilla site, I'm supposed to download j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586.bin. No instructions as to where to download.

I download this to the /usr/bin directory - just a guess.

I run the j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586.bin binary, and it seems to install.

Next I'm instructed to go to my firefox pluggins directoy and create a link. No indication as to where this directory exists. I do a find and come up with: :/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins. As good a guess as any, I suppose.

Now here is the real problem. I'm instructed to enter the following command.

ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so

I can issue the command, I even tried it. Problem is: there is no /usr/java directory. In fact I can't find a java plugin directory anywhere. I tried a:

find /usr -name "java" -print | grep plugin

and came up with: /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/j2re1.4.2_05/bin/java

Is that what I link to?

This sucks, it's a complicated ordeal, without so much as worthwhile instructions.

The .bin file just extracts the file into the directory it is in. It might be better to use /usr/share/, than run:
ls -n /usr/share/j2re1.4.2_03/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so inside /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins

Check all paths so they exist on your system! You're very close to resolving this.

I managed to crash firefox so bad that I had to re-install.

I went to the firefox plugins directory, and found "libjavaplugin_oji.so"

#find /usr -name libjavaplugin_oji.so -print
/usr/bin/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so
/usr/bin/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so

the first find looked about right, so I did a link to that:

ln - s /usr/bin/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so

CRASH!!

I reinstalled firefox, went back the pluggin directory, removed the link, here is what's left:

/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins# ls -l
total 24
drwxrwxr-x 8 root root 4096 2004-08-24 09:13 j2re1.4.2_05
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20176 2004-06-14 18:24 libnullplugin.so

Now I'm at a loss again.

BTW: I am very unhappy with mozilla/firefox in this aspect. Must this be so difficult? Adding the java plugin to firefox on the windows side was a cinche. This is exactly the sort of thing that scares windows users away from F/OSS - especially linux.

Couldn't mozilla have at least have given decent instructions? As it is, mozilla's instructions are either incomplete, or completely wrong.

You linked the wrong file:

Do:

ln -s /usr/bin/j2re1.4.2_05/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so in the plugins directory of Firefox.

Sample from my system:
/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins$ ls -l

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root **** libjavaplugin_oji.so -> /usr/share/java.current/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so

(java.current here is another symlink to the java folder for easy updating)

I do agree on the not so userfriendly part of this, but noobs should wait for Linspire and Xandros to evolve. I see to many issues a non-techy will never be able to solve. Ever tried to get lm-sensors working?

That did it. Thank you.

There is a "Debian Way" to install Java, even "non-free" versions (that is, ones that actually work ). It's in this hefty FAQ. The detailed installation instructions for the Sun JRE/SDK are in this section.