How to Install Java 11/8 on Amazon Linux

This tutorial will help you to install Java 11 or Java 8 on the Amazon Linux system. As of now, Oracle has restricted these Java versions for registered users only, we will use OpenJDK for this installation.

Step 1 – Install Java on Amazon Linux

The OpenJDK 8 is available under default yum repositories and OpenJDK 11 is available under Amazon Linux 2 extras repositories. You can simply install Java 11 or Java 8 on the Amazon Linux system using the following commands.

Run below commands to install Java 11 on Amazon Linux:

sudo amazon-linux-extras install java-openjdk11

Run below commands to install Java 8 on Amazon Linux:

sudo yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk

Step 2 – Check Active Java Version

After successfully installing Java on Amazon Linux using the above steps, Let’s verify the installed version using the following command.

java -version

openjdk version "1.8.0_222"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_222-8u222-b10-1ubuntu1~18.04.1-b10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.222-b10, mixed mode)

Step 3 – Switch Java Version

Use alternatives command-line utility to switch active Java version on your Amazon Linux system. Run below command from the command line and select the appropriate Java version to make it default.

alternatives --config java

After switching let’s check again active Java version:

java -version

openjdk version "11.0.2" 2019-01-15 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment 18.9 (build 11.0.2+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 18.9 (build 11.0.2+7-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)