There is just something about using the Sun (Oracle) JDK that makes me all warm inside. So when it was pulled from standard apt repos, and being a lunix novice I was a bit irked. For some time I had stooped to simply installing it from provided binaries, which works, but is a pain in the arse. I recently discovered an article which almost gets me back to where I want to be, installing the JDK from apt. A few tweaks and here is what will get you there:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sudo update-alternatives --config java
Simple enough.