How to install the Sun Java JDK on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)?

All you need to do is uncomment the two lines in /etc/apt/sources.list that refer to "partner"

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
# uncomment the two lines referring to "partner"
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jdk

(I can't find the command add-apt-repository on Ubuntu 10.10, 64 amd ... even searching with apt-cache yields nothing)

I am assuming that you need the JDK itself. If so you can accomplish this with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

You don't really need to go around editing sources or anything along those lines.

For Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop simply do this: Ubuntu - Installing Java.