[dragonbite]

I have a scenario that cropped up over the weekend.

I was trying to get Java installed so I could use a website and upload pictures to be developed.

I have a mundane site which uses Java on the front page I usually use to test Java is working. Nice thing is Firefox shows the message "You need to install a plugin" and provides a button. It didn't show up with the picture site so I used this other one instead.

In Ubuntu, when I clicked "Install Plugin" I then saw a screen of 3 choices; OpenJDK, Java 5 and Java 6. So I made my selection and the system downloaded it, popped up the license agreement and installed just fine.

When I tried it in Fedora, it could not install so I needed to do it manually. I looked for it in the Fedora repositories (KPackageManager) and could not find it ("jre" comes back with nothing, "java" comes back with too much, etc.)

I ended up Googling for java on Fedora and find a couple of peoples personal blogs about installing the official Sun version of Java. First you have to install a couple libraries, then download the Sun java version (not the .rpm either) and then run a couple of scripts to hook it to Firefox.

Now, I understand that Fedora is not orientated to the newbie user or anything, but this extreme difference in how they do it, I think, exemplifies one area where people new to Linux will either accept it (Ubuntu's method) or throw up their arms in dismay (Fedora's method).

I'm sorry that I don't know which method openSUSE provides, but if openSUSE is targeting newbies then I hope it is more similar to the method Ubuntu provides.

Oh, and the same method can be used to install Flash (or the 2 open source equivalents).