Netscape7.1 & Java plugin (Linux) ?

[Dr. Gary E. RAFE]

This is to update a post I made here
back on 24 December 2003 regarding
Netscape 7.1 & Java on our 4.8-RELEASE
system.

Since then, an upgrade to 4.9-RELEASE
had no effect on the availability of
a working Java plugin for Netscape 7.1
(Linux flavor).

A recent upgrade to 5.2.1-RELEASE, however,
brought a welcome change:

uname -a:
  FreeBSD myhost 5.2.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE #1: Sun Mar  7 13:35:18 EST 2004     root at myhost:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/TSP6100A  i386

Netscape 7.1:
  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1

Sun Java2 JRE (j2re-1_4_2_03-linux-i586.bin):
  java version "1.4.2_03"
  Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_03-b02)
  Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_03-b02, mixed mode)

Symbolic link from /pathto/Netscape7.1/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so to
 /pathto/j2re1.4.2_03/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so

While this fails on 4.9-RELEASE, this "just" works
(Java console starts, applets run)
on 5.2.1-RELEASE.

So, what's the difference ?
Yet another reason to move to FreeBSD 5.

Cheers,
--
Gary E. RAFE, Ph.D.
gary.rafe at utoledo.edu