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Sounds like it is creating a standard MSI file, try this:
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/download.html

You can make a Linux executable quite easily using a similar trick to the Windows executable version. Just cat a shell script that tries to run itself as a JAR file with an actual JAR file.

Sorry -- the shell script needs permissions to run. No Execute Bit Set.

Additionally, All of my applications -- Especially Java (iced tea), runs as a user of the same name & group. So, EG: my Java App called JOGL-BlockDrop is run as jogl-bd and only has access to jogl-bd or jogl-bd-perm grouped files, and that group is not allowed to make UDP or TCP connections (I give per application / group access to my network via iptables).

Note: The BlockDrop .jar file can't automatically add files to the jogl-bd-perm under my setup, so even if the shell script could execute, it wouldn't have the same permissions that I've granted the original program.

I tried doing a similar setup on windows, but it was a mess, and I never got it working right -- Esp. For Java!

As expected: window's firewall treats all Java apps as the same app by default; Allow one Java .jar Internet access and they all have it. One Java app I saw used a proprietary installer to allow the firewall integration on windows to work, but I've not seen many java programs distributed using such features. To say nothing of a cross-platform solution; Which, I suppose you can provide yourself with Java's security / permission framework -- But I don't trust it, I use the OS security framework -- a bug in the Java stack could bypass the Java permission framework's restrictions.

Expecting an untrusted app to behave itself is like trusting rats to guard your cheese reserves... Fortunately with Linux & other Unix ( or other Posix complying OSs) per app security / permissions is easy to accomplish.

There are four access levels, not one, and an installer can specify which one it neds to use. The UAC popups should get developers writing correct manifest files pretty quickly.

In addition to that, should a non-priviledged program try to write to the Program Files directory, Vista will instead show the application access to a subdirectory of the current user's Application Data folder

I already moderated in this thread, but I'll cancel it out to reply to this.

Windows installers can ask for the level of access they need. If an installer doesn't request an access level (as most don't) then the default is to assume it needs maximum access. This is so that Vista can install XP/2000 etc apps are still able to install.

It's a good thing that Vista shows an annoying box if no level is set in the manifest, because hopefully it will mean developers write installers that only ask for the access level they need.

This is definately a good preview edition, we've been able to push through a release based off of this instead of using it as a firefox extension by using Advanced Installer which made MSIs easy for me. I'm sure any platform specific installer would be able to work as well, and we'll probably hang on to this for later MSI packaging once XulRunner has it's own installer(but once it does have it's own installer/upgrader we'll switch to that so we can run our stuff on Mac's again(and *nix, but that hasn't come up).

You can change the location of the cache dir by setting the browser.cache.disk.parent_directory preference in about:config.

I've used a modification of the createprofile.vbs script from FFDeploy to set this up as new profiles are created from a login script.

I actually ended up creating my own msi files using a combination of regmon and filemon from Sysinternals to map it out, and Advanced Installer (the free version) to build the package. I ended up with a package that I can push out that includes flash and shockwave as well as a default profile with adblock included. I then use my version of the createprofile.vbs script in the users' login script to create an initial profile using the default one.

It takes a bit of effort to get right, but it's well worth it if you have a number of machines to push this out to. The bummer is that I only just got around to putting 1.0.7 out, and now 1.5 is out. Oh well.

Agreed.... at least I thought so, but recently while trying to deploy FF with group policies I came across Advanced Installer which is a free(beer) MSI authoring tool that makes it really simple to create MSI's. I've made my own custom MSI's for firefox using a combination of this and FFDeploy (well actually just the createProfile.vbs and manual method from it).

works like a charm.

Windows Installer has many benefits over installation software such as NSIS, old InstallShield (the non-Windows Installer versions), or other tools such as Inno Setup.

Windows Installer supports installation rollbacks, so failures restore the system exactly back to the state before installation began. I'm not sure if NSIS or other installers support rollbacks, but I have encountered installers in the past that left files everywhere when they quit after a failure.

I just set up a Windows network as a learning experience, and Windows Installer packages greatly simplify and automate software installation on the network. For example, I can install Office by doing an administrative install, which basically copies all the installation files to a network location, and then assigning Office to network users via a couple clicks. Office is automatically installed when the computer restarts. This works with all Windows Installer packages that support an administrative install; places such ActiveState even provide MSI packages for Python and Perl.

In addition to administrative installs, Windows Installer also supports application advertisement, which basically does things such as add only shortcuts or file associations. The program is automatically installed when the user clicks the shortcut or attempts to open a file.

There is also built-in package repair because Windows Installer keeps track of installed components. You can find more information about these and other features here.

Mind you, Windows Installer technology itself is free, and the database system it uses is documented at MSDN. There are freeware MSI authoring tools such as Advanced Installer, and I recall seeing a web-based tool on SourceForge for modifying MSI packages. Your statement that Windows Installer adds a ton of crap your C drive which are not related to the actual program being installed is also unproven.

If you want small and fast installers with tools such as Inno Setup, by all means go ahead and use them, but they do make things more difficult for network administrators.