I'm pulling out what's left of my hair over this one.... Ubuntu removed Sun's Java VM from their backports for legal reasons, and I've been looking for a way to install it ever since. The good and well-meaning folks at UbuntuForums.org have tried to help me, but to no avail (check out the thread in Backports|Requests for the full details). So....

Is there a repository somewhere that still has a copy? Or alternately, does anyone have a good, working .deb file that they can email to me? I have several favourite Java apps that work beautifully on WinXP (such as Azureus and Arachnophilia), and I'd really, really like to be able to use them in Ubuntu as well.

Thanks....

follow installation guides on ubuntu wiki or forums for java. Use java-package to create a deb from the .bin file that you can download from java.sun.com(stay legal or google for one deb to download )

I tried that, but without luck. I did, however, manage to get it working by simply installing directly from Sun's .bin file into a subdirectory of my $HOME, and editting some config files by hand. Of course, this means that apt-get/Synaptic doesn't know about Java, but I'm not troubled by that.

if you don't mind blackdown jdk put this line in /etc/apt/sources.list:

After execute in a terminal :
* to let debian know about your java use equivs package. See for example http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/de...-faq/ch11.html

I have no particular distaste for blackdown, though I think I'll wait until a 1.5 release before switching over. Going from a 1.5 to a 1.4 release just feels wrong, somehow....

I just installed sun-j2re1.5 today by adding this apt source:

deb http://ubuntu.tower-net.de/ubuntu/ hoary java

Hope this helps.

Does that repo have backports for Breezy? I upgraded a few days ago & I'm not sure what effect installing a .deb meant for Hoary would have.

No , they don't have a backport for Breezy, at the moment, but I don't think that is really important in this case.
I'm running Breezy and it seems to work fine.