<p>On Ubuntu Linux with Gnome, running my Swing application by double clicking on the jar file in Gnomes file browser leads to errors because required libraries that are dynamically loaded via the Java Plugin Framework (residing in subdirectories) are not found.</p>

<p>The base libraries for the framework itself are resolved correctly, as stated in my executable jar's manifest file.
However, once the framework launches, no plugins (not even the one specifying my platform) are found.</p>

<p>Launching the application from the terminal via</p>

<pre>
java -jar myjar.jar
</pre>

<p>works like a charm, ad does running the application by double-clicking a shell-script.</p>

<p>However, I'd like to avoid a terminal window. (I'm a Windows person, maybe it won't annoy linux people as it does annoy those on windows.)</p>

<p>The problem is reproducible across several Linux systems.
Is there something I need to do so Java resolves the libraries correctly?</p>

Java loads jars in order in its classpath, i.e. jar1:jar2:jar3... Most java applications ship with some sort of script which sets all of this up by specifying a classpath and a list of jars that the application will need.
What you want to do is probably not terribly advisable, as it means globally specifying a collection of jars that you want to load with every java application, and you're liable to create conflicts with whatever libraries ship with the application.
This isn't really a problem, the easiest solution is probably to throw together a little shell script launcher.