Installing Oracle JDK7 on Debian GNU Linux

Since Oracle does not allow anymore to ship its "orignal" JDK7 with Linux distributions developers are to either use OpenJDK7 or manually install Oracle JDK7. Fortunately the oldtimer debian tool java-package got revived which makes it pretty easy to create an installable deb of the Oracle JDK tarball.


So here we go:

First download Oracle JDK7 tarball (not rpm!) e.g. jdk-7u3-linux-x64.tar.gz then fire up a shell.

sudo apt-get install java-package
make-jpkg jdk-7u3-linux-x64.tar.gz
sudo dpkg -i oracle-j2sdk1.7_1.7.0+update3_amd64.deb
sudo update-java-alternatives -l
sudo update-java-alternatives --jre --plugin -s  j2sdk1.7-oracle