I have tried downloading JRE as best I could. Most likely I don’t really know what I’m doing. Anyone give any help on this? This is using BASE.
If you are running Windows you need to download a 32-bit JRE. Not the 64-bit even if you run a 64-bit windows.
List of features requiring Java given in this thread. The main dependency though for Base is HSQLDB as indicated in this thread.
May I recommend that all the necessary programs required for the Libreoffice applications be incorporated in the installation process to avoid such frustrating experiences. I’ve gone through the same difficulty and when I applied the recommendations I was able to access two base files but I still can’t access two others.
You can certainly recommend, but something different is likely to happen. The two are different products made by different organisations and distributed under different licenses. In the past both Java and StarOffice (which became OpenOffice/LibreOffice) were both made by one company. Now efforts are being made to get rid of the Java dependency in LO, but it is a large task that will take time.