Thank you Sun and Ubuntu!

... and the cast of thousands that made installing a Sun JDK onto Linux as simple as:

root@endor:~# apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gcc-3.3-base java-common libstdc++5 odbcinst1debian1 sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre unixodbc
Suggested packages:
equivs binfmt-support sun-java6-demo sun-java6-doc sun-java6-source sun-java6-plugin ia32-sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
ttf-baekmuk ttf-unfonts ttf-unfonts-core ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-arphic-uming libmyodbc odbc-postgresql
libct1
Recommended packages:
libxp6 libnss-mdns gsfonts-x11
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gcc-3.3-base java-common libstdc++5 odbcinst1debian1 sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre unixodbc
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 42.3MB/43.1MB of archives.
After unpacking 128MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

For those on the sidelines, Sun has not been particularly forthcoming regarding a licensing arrangement that makes the RMS-ites at least mildly comfortable with automating an installation. In point of fact, I believe Debian is still uncomfortable with the whole license arrangement, though they do have it in the non-free repository.

Up until recently, getting Java onto a Linux box was, well, not difficult, but certainly not trivial. I'm happy to say it's gotten as easy as installing any other package, which, with current package managers, means it's a breeze.

Yay progress.