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Robin Cornelius wrote: > > I though reading news a while a go that sun was gpling java, BUT the > java packages are in the debian non-free repository, may be they are > not fully GPL or did i just imagine this news? > > any way my /etc/apt/sources.list :- > > deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main main contrib non-free SUN are still getting it all packaged and released under the GPL. It is a LOT of material, including things like "Micro Edition", or whatever their portable device thing is called these days. These things take time, SUN have to check what they actually own (wouldn't want them doing a SCO, and sending stuff out under the GPL when they didn't mean to - hehehe). As such Debian Etch won't have GPLed Java components in at release, and so will only ship with stuff that can use the current free software Java environments. Although there may be stuff in "contrib" (can rely on non-free) or "non-free" (Not officially part of Debian). The non-free Java packages in Debian download the programs from the SUN website and build ".deb" files with the relevant software in. So if SUN's word is good enough for you (it was for me in the past), or you don't care about software freedom it is easy enough to build debs. The original question was Java for the Opera browser, which would require a browser plug-in - possibly the Mozilla JRE plug-in, I'm not sure what browser plug-in formats Opera uses. These plug-ins are more than just "java" or a "java runtime environment", the plug-in needs to have a "security manager", this is the software that prevents Java applets from doing the things Java Applications can do, like stealing all your files. (The security manager is what distinguishes Java Applets from ActiveX controls; simply put - one has security, one doesn't). Similarly the plug-in allows it to display the Java applet results within the browser Windows/Environment. Some of the free software JRE implementations initially shipped without security managers for Applets, I wouldn't recommend installing them except for further software development. Although often the browser plug-ins are bundled in the Java Runtime Environment package for a platform. I believe this is true of the Mozilla and IE plugins for Windows, and Linux. As such the question is not "how do I install Java", but how to install a Java plug-in for Opera, which I'm afraid I know nothing about. Similarly the answers for Ubuntu and Debian will be subtly different, and newbies probably don't want to learn figure out how to do it from one, and not the other. Since no one said "this is what to do", I'd suggest the original poster ask at the Ubuntu forums. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html