How to Install JAVA 8 on Ubuntu 18.04/16.04, Linux Mint 19/18

There are two standard types of installation available are JDK and JRE. JDK (Java Development Kit) provides the ability to develop a new Java application, which includes Java compiler. JRE (Java Runtime Environment) provides the runtime environment for any Java application with applets. The Java developers required to install JDK and JRE both on their system to create new Java Applications.

Use this tutorial to install OpenJDK Java 8 on Ubuntu 19.10, 18.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, LinuxMint 19, 18 using PPA. Follow the below steps to install Java 8 on Ubuntu via the command line.

Step 1 – Install Java 8 on Ubuntu

The OpenJDK 8 is available under default Apt repositories. You can simply install Java 8 on an Ubuntu system using the following commands.

Run below commands to install Java 8 on Ubuntu and LinuxMint.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-8-jre

Step 2 – Verify Java Installation

You have successfully installed Java 8 on your system. Let’s verify the installed and current active version using the following command.

java -version

openjdk version "1.8.0_252"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_252-8u252-b09-1ubuntu1-b09)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.252-b09, mixed mode)

Step 3 – Setup JAVA_HOME and JRE_HOME Variable

As you have installed Java on your Linux system, You must have to set JAVA_HOME and JRE_HOME environment variables, which is used by many of the Java applications to find Java libraries during runtime. You can set these variables in /etc/environment file using the following command.

cat >> /etc/environment <<EOL
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64
JRE_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre
EOL

All done, you have successfully installed Java 8 on a Linux system. You may also need to install Tomcat server to run your Java web application. Use our another tutorial to Install Tomcat 7 or Install Tomcat 8 or Install Tomcat 9 on Ubuntu, Debian, and LinuxMint systems.