Excerpts from

README.linux for JDK 1.1.7, Version 1a
11/4/98

Installation
------------

Installation of the Linux JDK is trivial, but you have to get the version of
the JDK that matches your environment.  (If you are not on an x86 based Linux
system, skip to the bottom of this section).  For the x86 processor
family, there are two flavors; the version you get depends on your environment.
The versions are known as "glibc" and "libc5", and reflect the type of C
runtime library that's installed on your machine.  Generally, you should get
the glibc version if your machine is running glibc, but libc5 should work
acceptably as well, if you have a recent (say, past April 1, 1998) version of
the glibc library installed on your machine (RedHat 5.0 by default comes with
an older version of glibc, you need to get the 2.0.7-7 version from RedHat to
win).

To discover which kind of system you have, (remember, these instructions
are for x86 based Linux only):

   ls -l /lib/libc.so.*

What you are looking for is lines of the form

   /lib/libc.so.<num>

If all you see are lines where <num> is 5, then you have libc5.  If you
have a line where <num> is 6, then you have glibc, and you should get the
glibc version.  An additional check is to look in /lib for libdl.so.<num>:
if at least one <num> here is 2, then you definitely have a glibc system and
you should get the glibc JDK (although I believe the libc version will also
work for you).