I needed my home XPC (openSUSE 11) to connect to a particular website that provides VPN service (via a Java plugin) so that I can download a bunch of binaries for testing and demo. BAM! That's when I realized the 64-bit Firefox 3.0 does not have a Java plugin... well, to be precise... 64-bit Firefox doesn't support the 32-bit Java plugin. It appears that SUN does not have a 64-bit Java plugin at this time.
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Searched the web for more information and alternatives and here they are:
1) Iced Tea is a free software implementation of Java based on SUN's openJDK. Using YaST, I removed the 32-bit SUN Java 1.6 plugin and installed 64-bit IcedTea 7 plugin. It worked for some sites with Java applets but not all. I decided to ditch this and go for (2) below as openJDK and IcedTea are fairly new and I'm not really interested in debugging where/why a particular applet wouldn't work with it.
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2) Remove 64-bit Firefox and install a 32-bit Firefox and Java plugin. I know, its kinda silly and seems a step backwards. However, I can live with a 32-bit Firefox as its just the browser and the rest of my system still leverages the 64-bit hardware.
You can read more, in detail, at this openSUSE page on the same subject.
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Oh yeah, I mentioned that I didn't have this challenge when using the 64-bit SLED 10 SP2 on my Thinkpad...
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