Install Oracle JDK 8 on Linux

Oracle Java is the proprietary, reference implementation for Java. This is no longer currently available in a supported Ubuntu repository. This article shows you the way to manually install the latest Oracle Java Development Kit (Oracle JDK) in Ubuntu.

Note: This article uses JDK8_Update_$java_update_no to demonstrate the installation. In the provided commands, replace the version specific paths and file names to your downloaded version.

Oracle stopped further updates to Java 8 since January 2019. A new article on how to install Oracle JDK 11 is available here: Install Oracle JDK 11 on Linux

Step 1:

Download the latest JDK(jdk-8u$java_update_no-linux-x64.tar.gz) from this official site.

DOWNLOAD

If you want to download to a remote server or if you simply prefer wget, use the command given in this Stackoverflow answer: Downloading JDK

Step 2:

Open the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and enter the following command.

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/jvm

If the /usr/lib/jvm folder does not exist, this command will create the directory. If you already have this folder, you can ignore this step and move to next step.

Step 3:

Enter the following command to change the directory.

cd /usr/lib/jvm

Step 4:

Extract the jdk-8u$java_update_no-linux-x64.tar.gz file in that directory using this command.

sudo tar -xvzf ~/Downloads/jdk-8u$java_update_no-linux-x64.tar.gz

According to this command, the JDK filename is jdk-8u$java_update_no-linux-x64.tar.gz and which is located in the ~/Downloads folder. If your downloaded file is in any other location, change the command according to your path.

Step 5:

Enter the following command to open the environment variables file.

sudo gedit /etc/environment

Step 6:

In the opened file, add the following bin folders to the existing PATH variable.

/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin
/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/db/bin
/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/jre/bin

The PATH variables have to be separated by semicolon.

Notice that the installed JDK version is 1.8 update $java_update_no. Depending on your JDK version, the paths can be different.

Add the following environment variables at the end of the file.

J2SDKDIR="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version"
J2REDIR="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/jre"
JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version"
DERBY_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/db"

The environment file before the modification:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

The environment file after the modification:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/db/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/jre/bin"
J2SDKDIR="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version"
J2REDIR="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/jre"
JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version"
DERBY_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/db"

Save the changes and close the gedit.

Step 7:

Enter the following commands to inform the Ubuntu about the Java's location. Depending on your JDK version, the paths can be different.

sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin/java" 0

sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin/javac" 0

sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin/java

sudo update-alternatives --set javac /usr/lib/jvm/$java_version/bin/javac

Step 8:

To verify the setup enter the following commands and make sure that they print the location of java and javac as you have provided in the previous step.