Why do I need JAVA_HOME? I simply added the path to the PATH= line in etc/profile and all is well.

It strikes me that I should not have downloaded the javasdk*.bin and installed it by making it executable. I think they had a javasdk*.rpm I could have installed via alien. If I had done that I probably wouldn't have to do all this path stuff by hand, right? I've never had to do that with *.deb or *.rpm files....

Another thing, the dox on java.sun.com said to install the *.bin in /usr/local. I don't know why. If I had installed it in /usr/bin, would I have had to worry about the path as /usr/bin was already on my PATH?

TIA,
AJG