mozilla, j2re1.4, Request for Test

[Finn-Arne Johansen <faj@bzz.no>]

As many of you may have noticed, I've created a backport of Mozilla
that actually works on Woody. 
The problem with the mozilla in Woody was that it was way to old. 
The there was the backports that would crash whenever you tried to use
the editor, either the html-editor within mozilla, or the editor at
http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/, and the editor on
classfronter, the Learning Management System (LMS) 
There were also the binaries from mozilla.org, but those would have
been harder to upgrade. 

So basicly what I did was to recompile on woody, using gcc-3.0 instead
of gcc-29.4 

But then we got the problem with java. Well we could just leave out
java, but then we would have gotten a lot of complaints. But j2re1.3
which is included with skolelinux, does not work. 

Newer mozilla's need j2re1.4.

So I took the j2re1.4 binary, unpacked it, repacked it into a debian
package, following the schemas from the j2re1.3 package. (kind of
reversed enginered the package, not the software). I also asked for
permission from Sun, and got it, se [1] and [2]

Petter have asked me if I've been in contact with the blackdown people,
which it at that point hadnot, but SInce then I've tried to send them
an mail. Still no answer from them. But what I've done, is that I've
created a package from the Package from sun.com. thos are located at
the same place as my mozilla packages. (Actually they are in
woody-test, but I've created my own repository, which only gives you
the packages I want you to test) 
To test the packages, add the following to your sources.list: 
 deb http://ftp.skolelinux.no/ ~finnarne/mozilla/
then 
 apt-get update && apt-get install mozilla j2re1.4

You may even install the localisation packages for mozilla
 apt-get install mozilla-locale-xx

replace xx with you locale, use 
  apt-cache search mozilla-locale
to locate the different languages availible 

No why all the work about mozilla ?

Well, the feedback I'm getting is that it's mozilla that works best
with classfronter. Maybe konqueror in kde 3.2 works fine as well, but
that is a bigger task to take on, upgrading kde. 

Since I built mozilla 1.5 for skolelinux, mozilla 1.6 has entered
sarge, and I will work on getting mozilla 1.6 to work on skolelinux. 

But We want to release Skolelinux before sarge stabilizes, so please
test and give feedback. 

And Yes, If I get a response from the blackdown project, I will
incorporate their j2re1.4 if it's possible. 

And No - I have not discussed the java matters with the people at
debian-legal or whatever. We, Skolelinux/Debian-edu have permission to
include j2re1.4 on our CD. I've not asked on behalf of The Debian
Project. That is a matter for some one else, or maybe me, but not
before Skolelinux release 1.0. 
If you want to discuss java License, please start a new thread. 

[1] http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/sl-packages_appendix/7_JRE_in_Skolelinux_Debian-Edu.eml
[2] http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/sl-packages_appendix/8_Re_JRE_in_Skolelinux_Debian-Edu.eml

-- 
Finn-Arne Johansen 
faj@bzz.no
http://bzz.no/