Well, I thought I'd post back on this thread one more time, because I know from personal experience that it's annoying when some noob posts a question, gets good advice, and then never posts back to let everyone else know how it worked out.
First off, "thanx" ppietro, for the info on IBM's JDK for the Linux/PPC platform. Before you even posted back to my second set of questions, I raced over to IBM's site, downloaded the JDK that I "assumed" was the right one, read the install notes, got the libstdc++ legacy headers (and libraries, or whatever), ran rpm -ivh on both packages, set the PATH value in my .bashrc file, and...
...BOOM! functioning JDK, Java version 1.6! (Or 6.0, or 2.0-6.0-1.6, or whatever they're calling it nowadays). Anyhoo, it was maybe the easiest install of ANY large app/package on ANY platform that I've ever had. (Well, other than that warez version of office '04 on mac X. Wait, I'm kidding. I don't have any warez! Holey crap, how'd the FBI get here so fast????)
Second, woo-hoo, I'm writing Modern Java!
Third, hey, Paul, you didn't come up with a word for "arcane-ness".
You can fool some of the people all of the time. The rest will just go along with it. --Me