How can an applet find the Netscape plugin directory under Linux?

According to the Java Technology on the Linux Platform: A Guide to Getting Started document:

To let your Netscape browser know where the Java plug-in library is, set the NPX_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable to point to the directory where the javaplugin.so shared library is located as follows:

export NPX_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/java/jdk1.3/jre/plugin/i386