Java on Debian (wow that was easy!)

[Greg Rundlett]

Thanks to a pointer from friendly folks at tonight's MELBA meeting, I
just got Java installed on Debian.  Every complex software
installation should be this easy.  There is a package called
java-package (which if your apt sources list does not include
'contribs' then apt will not even know about it -- but I'm getting
ahead of myself b/c the instructions account for that.)  Just visit
http://serios.net/content/debian/java/ and follow the instructions.

Java-package will take the self-extracting binary JDK that you can
download from Sun's website, and turn it into a Debian package (.deb
file) that you can then install normally via the apt system (in my
case dpkg -i ~/downloads/java/sun-j2sdk1.5_1.5.0+update04_i386.deb
does the trick)

Now I can install eclipse :-)