Sun Java installation issues

[Derek Broughton]

Glenn Holmer wrote:

> On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 12:51 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:

>> > Having said all that, it ought to be way easier for the average person
>> > to upgrade Java on a Linux box...
>>  
>> Certainly.  Install any java package from the Ubuntu package repository,
>> and they _should_ run update-java-alternatives themselves (last I
>> checked, the sun-java packages, at least, didn't - but that's a packaging
>> bug).
> 
> So what does the average user do, rebuild the package?

No, just manually run update-java-alternatives after installing the package.
 
> The biggest problem with that is that you're limited to whatever is in
> the repository.  I just checked, and for Java 6, it's update 6... and
> the current release is update 7.  Many people are also using 6u10, which
> is on its second release candidate already.  If the most current
> versions were available I'd use update-alternatives and ignore the
> ugliness behind the scenes.

I think that goes back to the issue of derangement :-)  Nobody _really_
needs to be more up-to-date than update 6.  Heavens, most of the software
I'm using still says it's only certified on Java5 - but they "think" it
will work on Java6.
-- 
derek