Archive for October 21st, 2009

How to install the 64-bit Sun Java plugin on 64-bit firefox on 64-bit Fedora Core 11 Linux (which happens to use 64 bits)

Posted by evan in Uncategorized on October 21st, 2009

I’m giddy! I found this post on mozdev.org which was magical. 

[evan@ehoffman ~]$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_17"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_17-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.3-b01, mixed mode)

[root@ehoffman plugins]# uname -a
Linux ehoffman 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Sep 25 04:43:32 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@ehoffman plugins]# pwd
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
[root@ehoffman plugins]# ln -s /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

The main thing I was missing was that the plugin isn’t libpluginjava_oji.so, or whatever I thought it was, but libnpjp2.so. Once I created the symlink into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins it worked (as verified on http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml and http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp).

That’s all it takes to get the Sun Java plugin working in Firefox on Linux.

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I put Fedora Core 11 on my work laptop

Posted by evan in Uncategorized on October 21st, 2009

My work laptop, which I got around the end of 2006, was starting to run like crap. Pretty sure it started around the time I put antivirus on it, which reinforces my theory that antivirus is a virus itself. Anyway, being bored with Windows XP and having already played with Windows 7 at home, I decided to install Linux. The last time I tried Linux desktop was around RedHat 7.3, which was a long time ago… pre-Fedora even. I’m pretty happy with CentOS on the server side and was set to try CentOS 5.3 on my laptop when someone suggested I go with FC due to more bleeding-edge driver support. Even though the hardware is pretty old at this point I figured it was worth a shot.

Generally everything works pretty well. Everything pretty much works out of the box – I had dual screens up at native resolution, it even recognized my phone as a camera when I plugged it in to charge it. Best of all, I was able to resize the NTFS partition (rather than blowing it away) so I can still boot back to XP when the need arises.

There are 2 problems I’ve had so far though:

  • the computer now hovers between 76 and 85 degrees Celsius, whereas under Win XP it generally peaked around 68 C. I tried underclocking the CPU down to 250 MHz but the problem persisted.
  • The Java plugin for Firefox … wtf? How can this not work? I downloaded Sun’s JDK and symlinked the libjavaplugin_whatever into /usr/lib64/mozilla/whatever/ and that didn’t work. Then I tried “yum install java-plugin” or something like that and that installed some OpenJava-ish plugin which looked like it was going to work, but when I logged into the Raritan KVM and clicked “Connect” it wouldn’t work. I booted up Win XP in a VM and Firefox with Java works fine. Really annoying and dumb.

I’ll probably try Ubuntu tomorrow as several people suggested it runs cooler than Fedora. If that fails then I guess I’ll go to Win7 after all. I also want an SSD for my work laptop now… my Windows VM seems to spent eternity spinning my crappy 5400 rpm drive. Plox.

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