I installed Debian countless times. So when I installed wheezy on my new desktop, I was following the usual routine of adding non-free sources then installing Adobe Flash Player and Sun Java, when I realized that the routine didn't work anymore - Debian no longer distributes Sun (Oracle) Java. So what should I do? Before I resigned to go back to java-package, it came to my mind that Sun Java's removal from wheezy was not new. How did my laptop work?
I had a nice realization checking that. I actually never installed Sun Java in the last install on my laptop, a year ago. I must have hit the problem then and delayed finding a solution, or chose to try IcedTea instead.
Whether this was intentional or not, it's time to realize that one doesn't "need" a proprietary Java anymore. Whether this is mainly due to IcedTea's quality or to a declining use of Java, it's now more than a year without proprietary Java, and I didn't even notice.
Improvements which you fail to notice are the best kind. Thanks to everyone who made this failure possible!