I installed Firefox 1.0 on my Slackware 10.1 box and needed the java jre to run javascripts in the browser. Here are my steps.
- Download the jre file from sun (jre-1_5_0_01-linux-i586.bin)
- Make the file executable (chmod a+x jre-1_5_0_01-linux-i586.bin)
- create an install directory (/usr/local/java) and cd to it
- Execute the file to unpack it (./jre-1_5_0_01-linux-i586.bin)
- Locate the Firefox plugin directory (locate firefox | grep -i plugin)
- cd to that directory (cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins)
- remove any existing links to libjavaplugin_oji.so
- Create a new link to libjavaplugin_oji.so
( ln -s /usr/local/java/jre1.5.0_01/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so)