The Solaris font.properties files are being copied into the J2RE's lib directory on the Linux platform. The files you currently find in the Linux lib directory are:
font.properties
font.properties.ISO8859_13
font.properties.ISO8859_13.5.7
font.properties.ISO8859_15
font.properties.ISO8859_2
font.properties.ISO8859_4
font.properties.ISO8859_5
font.properties.ISO8859_7
font.properties.ISO8859_9
font.properties.ja
font.properties.ja_JP_UTF8
font.properties.ja_JP_UTF8.5.7
font.properties.ko
font.properties.ko.5.6
font.properties.ko.5.7
font.properties.ko_KR_UTF8
font.properties.ko_KR_UTF8.5.6
font.properties.ko_KR_UTF8.5.7
font.properties.UTF8
font.properties.UTF8.5.6
font.properties.UTF8.5.7
font.properties.zh
font.properties.zh_CN_UTF8
font.properties.zh_EUC_CN
font.properties.zh_GBK
font.properties.zh_TW_Big5
font.properties.zh_TW_Big5.5.6
font.properties.zh_TW_EUC_TW
font.properties.zh_TW_UTF8

The only files that should be there are
font.properties
font.properties.ja
font.properties.zh

This is a regression introduced in Merlin B47.