I have seen NO Linux distro that installs Sun Java as smoothly as Windows or Mac.
Java works great with Archlinux. Just type
1 2 3
| $ pacman -S j2sdk or $ pacman -S j2re |
And there you are... It's all I did and I can play cas' games through javawebstart without any problem.
Last time I checked Ubuntu, Java worked almost out-of-the-box, just need to replace gcc... Aptitude should be able to do it manually. Oh, wait, aptitude is not so great

When you later uninstall mysql, it will automatically *un-install* precisely those of the libraries that were only in use by MySQL
I use Debian on my server (and used it before on my main desktop computer), I don't remember aptitude being capable of this. Aptitude can't recursively remove unused dependencies. Correct me if I'm wrong.