Why do applets have so many problems under Netscape/Linux?

The Java implementation running in the Netscape shipped for Linux is an old JDK1.1.x implementation that has not received much recent attention.

The best way to run Java under Netscape is the Java Plug-in, which runs with a current JDK instead of Netscape's ancient code. Unfortunately, applets that need to use the Plug-in require special HTML tags.