Install Oracle Java 6 JDK on CentOS 6 and RHEL 6

This little HOW-TO shows you how install Oracle's Java 6 JDK on the 64 bit version of CentOS 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (x86_64) and how to configure your system and browser to use this faster java.

Install Java6 JDK
Download it from Oracle's website www.oracle.com and make it executable

wget http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/6u27-b07/jdk-6u27-linux-x64-rpm.bin
chmod u+x jdk-6u27-linux-x64-rpm.bin
./jdk-6u27-linux-x64-rpm.bin

Make our system and browsers use our new java

/usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/default/bin/java 20000 
/usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so libjavaplugin.so /usr/java/default/jre/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so 20000