Java and Linux

I've had some problems playing in Gecko (i.e. Firefox, Mozilla, Galeon, Epiphany, Iceweasel and other Mozilla-Gecko based browsers) with Java on Linux and I understand others had the same problem. Got it sussed tonite so here's what people want to do on anything resembling a Redhat box (CentOS, Mandriva, Whitebox, etc.):

1st download and install the latest version of Java from the Sun website following the directions on there.

After that fire up a terminal and get root (type "su" [without quote marks], press return then type in your root password), change directories to the Mozilla plugins directory by typing in
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (Edit: this is still the same directory in rpm-based *nixes in 2009)
then type
ln -fs /usr/java/jre1.5.0_04/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so (Edit: or whatever the location is. In Mandriva 2009 with SunJava 1.6.0 it's /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-sun-1.6.0.10/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so)

This provides a symbolic link (if your security is set well, i.e. no hard links allowed) to the newest Java install on your machine and overwrites any previous links to other previous versions of Java (i.e. don't do this if Java works fine at the moment and you're really not sure what you're doing . Some scripts send you to the ns7-gcc32 subdirectory instead which won't work and indeed will not let Firefox startup. Good luck and happy Thudding!
)