Firefox 64 bit Java, ICA und Flash Plugins using (K)Ubuntu 7.10

My new hardware is more easy to get running, than the need for more experience of 64 bit versions of the Ubuntu universe. In the amd64 Version Firefox is a 64 bit application, also video and audio via Mplayer-Plugin are 64 bit an running perfect. For my needs Java, Citrx ICA and Flash are missing. So let’s go…

Flash

You can use either Adept Manager or apt-get to install the flashplugin-nonfree package which contains Adobe Flash Player plugin installer. If you restart Firefox you are done. Give YouTube a try, do not forget tune up the volume that’s it.

apt-get install  flashplugin-nonfree

Citrix ICA

Download the Linux ICA Client on http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/ they offer .rpm and .tar.gz which I prefer. You have to install motif libraries before:

apt-get install libxaw6 libmotif3

mkdir /tmp/ica

cd /tmp/ica

tar -xzf  /your/path/to/de.linuxx86.tar.gz

sudo ./setupwfc

starts the installation procedure. Now adjust the 32 bit plugin with

nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so

to be used in Firefox 64 bit version. The link “npica.so” in the folder /usr/lib/firefox/plugins, which was generated by the Citrix installation program can be deleted.

Java

As former user of the 32 bit version I desperately searched for the sun-java5-plugin package. With the help of Google I found that there is no current 64 bit plugin, but Sun plans to build a 64 bit plugin with Java 7. Some users reported they get the 32 bit plugin in the package ia32-sun-java5-bin goining. For me it did not work at all. Beware the java-gcj-compat-plugin is a security hole and not designed to surf the web at all. Finally all what is left is the Blackdown Java plugin:

sudo apt-get install  j2re1.4-mozilla-plugin

cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

ln -s  /usr/lib/j2se/1.4/jre/plugin/amd64/mozilla/libjavaplugin_oji.so

The Blackdown plugin is not exactly brilliant — as you can clearly see on the Sun Applet testpage — but most important pages for me are working. By the way, I tried the very new Java 7 JRE amd64 nightly builds on http://download.java.net/jdk7/binaries/. They do not contain a plugin (the 32 bit Java 7 version does contain the plugin). One last hint on trying different Java runtimes the command sudo update-alternatives –config java and deleting ~/.java between the playing around actions is handy.
The last alternative if you need Sun Java is to install a 32 bit Firefox. SO you have to use the .tar.gz installation in alternative location. Bottom line, the current situation is not wonderful, let us wait for Java 7 final release.