Please excuse me if I posted this in the incorrect place, please move it to the correct area. Also please excuse me for not knowing the basics yet, I am trying to "beat the learning curve" but I fear the curve is currently winning.
I have been wanting to learn linux for some time now but have always been afraid to try, so last night I installed Suse 10.2 on an old PC. Started exploring around and was finding my self to like it a lot. Now my first problem has arisen and I have spent a good 3 hours on it even know it is very simple I just don't know what to do.

I am trying to install Java (jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin) on my pc. I logged on the Root konsole and made a folder for it under /usr/java/
Next i tried ./jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin
and i got -bash: ./jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin: Permission denied
I am sure I'm just making some really newbie mistake but help would be nice.

Thanks.

As root (since you'll have to install it as root), type in "chmod 755 jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin" while you're in the same directory with the file.

Then run ./jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin The file got downloaded with no execute permissions, which isn't unusual.

Hope this helps.

That looks like it worked. If you have a second could you tell me what "chmod 755" in front of the "jre-6u1-linux-i586.bin". I know the chmod changes the access permissions but what about the 755? Also I have read that this java doesn't work as a plug in with firefox, do you know any thing about how to fix that? If not Thank you very much for getting me this far!

chmod 755 = change the permissions for the user/owner of the file(7), for users that belong to the same group as the owner (5) and for all other users (5).

The 7 -5 - 5 is a string of three sums:
4= read permissions
2 = write permissions
1 = execture permissions.
So someone who has all those permissions has 4 + 2 + 1 = 7; 5 = 4 +1, i.e. read and execute permissions. There are many variations on this: 640, 644, 660, 700 etc. - they all follow the same principle.

Java does work with firefox but not if it's the 64 version of the browser; but as a rule that can be solved by installing another plugin (nspluginwrapper or something like that).

Okay, I under stand. Thank you very much for explaining that. Also I will do some searching for that plug in. Thank you.