I dont have a clue what im doing with Debian so im sticking it all here in no particular order

for sarge:

add to etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian unstable main non-free
deb http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/debian-multimedia sarge main
deb ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/debian-multimedia sarge main

then type apt-get update

installing java:

apt-get install java-package

gcc errors?
apt-get gcc install

download your JRE/JDK.bin to the director in which you are working then as a USER NOT ROOT (adduser blah - then follow prompts) type:

fakeroot make-jpkg jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

or whatever ur bin is called.. if this bitches out with a module not found error your version of java-package is probably prior to 0.25 - you can check this by typing:

apt-cache policy java-package | head -2

at this stage you can try to find an up to date repository or you can just download a version of java-package higher than 0.24 and stick it in the directory then type:

dpkg -i java-package.deb

this might complain about unzip and soundlib.. to resolve this type:

apt-get -f install

this will resolve your dependency issues

now you should have a combiled JRE....deb sitting in your directory - if you dont then type

fakeroot make-jpkg jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

ok.. so far

now we have the .deb file you should just be able to type

dpkg -i jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.deb

and Java will be installed

type

java -version

to varify this