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I want the java plugin to work in Firefox and so I want to be clear on something. It appears that the default JRE (OpenJDK) that one gets from doing

sudo apt install default-jre

will not work, and so it is useless. One needs either icedtea-8-plugin:i386 or oracle-java8-installer. Is this right?

Previous answers to questions about this just say install icedtea, but do not explain why? I am asking specifically if this is because openjdk cannot be made to work in Firefox. And I am wondering why in the world that would be? Strikes me as absolutely crazy.

Byte Commander
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eshaya
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    http://askubuntu.com/questions/464755/how-to-install-openjdk-8-on-14-04-lts for a typical open- source installation. For oracle-java8-installer you need to add a PPA: https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/java –  Dec 30 '16 at 19:10
  • "Beginning in Firefox version 52, support for NPAPI plugins (java applets) in Firefox has ended" Firefox provides some assistance with installing Oracle's version: https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Manage-preferences-and-add-ons/Use-the-Java-plugin-to-view-interactive-content-on-websites/ta-p/3244 – Brent Bradburn Mar 24 '17 at 00:55

1 Answers1

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Oracle Java contains some additional closed-source features like the webstart browser plugin and a few more which are not included in the completely open-source OpenJDK implementation.

However, the IcedTea project provided an additional open-source package that adds the webstart functionality to OpenJDK.

So to run Java applets in any browser (Firefox has nothing to do with that), you need to

  • either install the proprietary Oracle Java implementation via a PPA that includes the browser plugin,
  • or install the additional icedtea-8-plugin package that adds an open-source browser plugin for the open-source OpenJDK Java implementation, with both packages being provided by the official Ubuntu repositories.

Possibly interesting further read: Why isn't Oracle Java included in the standard Ubuntu repo?

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Byte Commander
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