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

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Is there a patched version of OpenJDK-8 or Oracle JDK 8 for Ubuntu 14.10 which fixes ugly fonts in Java Applications (Jetbrains products, Netbeans etc.)?

I had previously installed a patched version of OpenJDK7 for Ubuntu 14.04 in this article, but it does not seem to be available for 14.10. I also could not find a patched version for OpenJDK8/OracleJDK8.

If there's any patched version or a patch for OpenJDK8/OracleJDK8 which I could install, I would really appreciate if anybody can point out.

Thank you.

Best Answer

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.

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