valshak.com

If you are a Linux user like I am then you've probably gone to a site that was constructed using a plugin or library that does not come natively installed or is not available in your distrobution's package repositories. So here's some instructions for getting some handy features up and running.

NOTE: I'm using Arch Linux, so if I mention using #pacman then you should translate that to your distrobution and make sure you're using the proper syntax for your distro's package handler. I will try to add a general source-based way to get the functionality too, just to round things off.

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Adobe Reader:
This will give your browser the ability to view PDF files in your browser just like windows does.

Arch Linux:
Visit the AUR here and click 'Files', then download all the files listed there into a directory of your choosing. Open a terminal and go to that directory (where you saved the files) and run $makepkg PKGBUILD, when it's done run #pacman -U acroread*.pkg.tar.gz.

Source-based:
The source can be downloaded from Adobe's site here. Inside the archive (tar.gz) you'll find some other archives (.TAR) but most importantly there's a text-file titled 'INSTALL'. Read this and you should be able to get Acrobat Reader working on any Linux system.

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Java:
Making it so Firefox will have the ability to run Java-based code.

Arch Linux:
This can be aquired by running #pacman -S jre. JRE stands for Java Runtime Environment. Pacman will do most of the work in this case but I found that, in some instances, the plugin may not get moved into the proper directory. So, to make sure this happens run #cp /opt/java/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/. Restarting Firefox will make sure that this new library will be loaded now.

Source-based:
Go to Java's website here and click the link titled 'Linux (self-extracting file)'. You'll be downloading an archived file (.bin). To save myself some keystrokes here's their installation instructions here.

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Java 3D:
I've only found one site that's required this plugin and this is it here. It's the site of the company that published the Calculus book I'm using. But perhaps someone out there has a site that requires these features as well. NOTE: There is nothing in the Pacman repositories or AUR for those using Arch so source is the only way it's going to happen.

Source-based:
First we need the source and these Java Devs are nice enough to provide us with a self-installing archive (.bin) that can be aquired here. Their readme is here.
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