Ubuntu – How to install OpenJDK 8 on 14.04 LTS

14.04javaopenjdk

Java 8 is now available according to http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/, but http://openjdk.java.net/install/ does not yet mention how to install OpenJDK 8 (not Oracle Java) on Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support. (For 14.10 and later just run apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk)

How and when can this be done?

(2017-08-08: The very short answer is: OpenJDK 8 as of 2017-08-08 is not officially available from the official repositories as an APT package for Ubuntu 14.04. See full summary in this answer)

Note: For now we will use Oracle Java – the optimal solution for me is, however, OpenJDK from the Ubuntu repositories, until Oracle Java is available directly and effortless from the Ubuntu repositories.

Best Answer

You can do this for;

Final Update

JDK

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

JRE

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre

Old Update

I found two repository but I do not recommend

OpenJDK builds (all archs)
```
  ppa:openjdk-r/ppa
```
OpenJDK 8 backport for trusty
```
  ppa:jochenkemnade/openjdk-8
```

Original Message

If you really want to use OpenJDK, you have to compile from source. There is not still any PPA for OpenJDK.

It has been requested at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1297065

I recommend you to use Webup8 Oracle Java8 Installer

Note: WebUpd8 team's PPA has been discontinued with effective from April 16, 2019. Thus this PPA doesn't have any Java files. More information can be found on PPA's page on Launchpad. Hence the below method no longer works and exists because of historical reasons.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

To automatically set up the Java 8 environment variables

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-set-default

Check it

java -version

So you have to wait to use OpenJDK8

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – OpenJDK-8/Oracle JDK 8 Font Patches for Ubuntu

After reading various tutorials and messing with a bunch of fixes I've found a way that works perfectly.

First of all download JDK 8 from Oracle and execute the following lines in the terminal:

cd Downloads
tar -xvf jdk-8u25-linux-x64.tar.gz
rm jdk-8u25-linux-x64.tar.gz
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/jvm/
sudo mv jdk1.8.0_25 /usr/lib/jvm/

Now download the JDK font fix (Courtesy of Urshulyak Yaroslav) by executing the following:

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://urshulyak.com/jdk-8u5-tuxjdk-b08.tar.gz
tar -xvf jdk-8u5-tuxjdk-b08.tar.gz
sudo mv jdk-8u5-tuxjdk-b08 /usr/lib/jvm
rm jdk-8u5-tuxjdk-b08.tar.gz

This will extract the downloaded zip and move it to /usr/lib/jvm/. Now run the following in the terminal:

cd ~
sudo gedit .bashrc

Then add the following lines to the very bottom of the bashrc file.

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_25/
export JAVA_HOME

Save it then gedit the idea.sh. (Your script location may be different)

gedit /home/USER/Downloads/idea/bin/idea.sh

At the very bottom of the script replace the line(s) in the While Do statement at the bottom with these two lines:

eval "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8u5-tuxjdk-b08/bin/java" $ALL_JVM_ARGS -Djb.restart.code=88 $MAIN_CLASS_NAME "$@"
test $? -ne 88 && break

Save it then open up IntelliJ, the fonts should work and you will be using Oracle JDK 8 for development. You will likely have to edit Project Settings and set up your JDK again but be sure to use the actual JDK and not the font fix one.

This fix also works with CLion, Android Studio and PyCharm.

These instructions assume the JDK version was 1.8.0_25, file/path names will change for future versions.

Ubuntu – Downgrade from OpenJDK 8 to OpenJDK 6

OpenJDK 6 is still in Ubuntu Trusty :

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=openjdk

If you have a reasonably powerful computer you could consider using Qemu/KVM or VirtualBox and install Ubuntu Trusty (14.04) as a guest VM. That would be the most clean solution in my opinion.

There's also a ppa for OpenJDK 6 which might or might not work in your Xenial install by editing the downloaded sources list file (Changing xenial into trusty) :

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6

In the latter case I recommend to remove the OpenJDK-8 first.