I have a Java application complied to a collection of jars that I want to make installable on Ubuntu and SuSE. I Want the installer to be able to check for the JRE, register a file association and be able to load a website on un-install.
I understand Ubuntu and SuSE are based on different architectures, so is there a consistent way to do this?
Does anyone have an advice on utilities to use or guides to read to help me achieve what I'm trying to do.
Take a look at InstallJammer if you're looking for a GUI installer. Otherwise, you might consider building a separate, native installer for each platform. RPM in the case of SuSE and DEB for Ubuntu. InstallJammer can give you a GUI and also register with the native package manager on each of those systems if you wish.
Distributing a deb and rpm for each platform would provide IMO the best user experience and system integration (checking the JRE dependency, registering file association, etc). For debian based distro, have a look at Packaging Java Apps for Ubuntu (slides are available here). To build a rpm, have a look at the RPM Howto or Development and Packaging Java Software for openSUSE.
If you don't want to build packages for each platform, I'd suggest to distribute an installer, for example with IzPack. This tool allows to generate a unique cross-platform installer, provides native integration, is highly customizable, covers the uninstall part and the generation of the installer can be easily included in an automated build (Ant or Maven based). It's really a nice tool. And it has serious references (Sun Microsystems, JBoss/RedHat, the Scala language project, some ObjectWeb/OW2 projects, XWiki, etc).
You can use BitRock InstallBuilder, it allows you to crete GUI installers, RPM and DEB packages. It can do what you specified (file associations, launch web pages, etc.) It is commercial but we have free licenses for open source projects and discounts for small companies
If you don't want to alienate users, do whatever you need to do to let the user manage your package using the tools native to that distribution (see Pascal Thivent's answer). For Ubuntu and SUSE, this means deb and rpm packages.
As a user, I immediately get irritated whenever I need to install packages with their own installers.