The Oracle logo has, in my mind anyway, beaten Intel’s, Microsoft’s and Fox’s trademarks in the race for most foreboding icon. All they seem to do is buy up cool things, rebrand them and then let them rot. That red and white logo appearing on a product is like finding a melanoma; you know it’s all going to go pear-shaped in the near future. Documentation will be hidden behind Oracle’s bizarrely unfriendly website; no further bugs will be fixed, but each download will be augmented with more crapware; each product will become increasingly difficult to obtain, as expensive and byzantine licencing strangles every aspect of the code; finally the quality of the code decreases inversely in proportion to the increase in cost until no-one can afford it, and no one wants it.
So here are a couple of alternative designs that have helped me find a little catharsis.
And for posterity and search-engines to come, here is how you get a Java plugin working in Firefox > 3.6.x under Linux:
- Ignore the crappy out of date documentation on Oracle’s site.
- Download Java for Linux from the download page.
- Install it (untar or install the rpm).
- The magic info you need to know is that the new and good plugin is no longer the one under “plugins”, instead it’s JAVA_HOME/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so. Obvious really!
- Copy or symlink this into Firefox’s plugin directory, and restart firefox. Bingo, it should show up in about:plugins.
