As far as installing the Sun version goes, it is included in the official Debian non-free repositories, both for i386 and amd64. Testing only has Sun Java 5, while unstable also has Sun Java 6.

apt-cache search sun-java
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

The "install it manually" article is actually giving bad advice. You can just install it from the repositories and configure the active java version with "update-alternatives".

installing java

Newsgroups: gmane.linux.debian.user
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006

> x@p4s:~$ limewire
> Starting LimeWire...
> Java exec found in PATH. Verifying...
> OOPS, you don't seem to have a valid JRE. . .
> You need to upgrade to JRE 1.4.x or newer from http://www.java.com[]
>
> x@p4s:~$ java -version
> java version "1.4.2"
> gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-20)
>
> What's the problem?

gcj has higher priority than sun java. To display your java alternatives, type

/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --display java

To change it, do

# /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --config java

Choose sun java as your preference.

Changing the alternatives for java will change it for javac, javadoc, javap etc. since these files are slaves of java.

John L Fjellstad @fjellstad.org