A Very Viable Drop-In Oracle JRE/JDK Alternative
Do not fall into Oracle's Java 11 trap
Do not fall into Oracle's Java 11 trap
Oracle enforcing commercial licenses in 2019
For Oracle Java 8. Not exactly news if you haven't been living under a rock for the last 9 months. You have the choice of OpenJDK Java 8 or Oracle Java 13 or paying for Oracle Java 8 at that point. It's shitty, but with any luck OpenJDK will support their releases for longer.
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Hi everyone,
I saw a post about Oracle Java audits. I figured that I'd share this for those bot yet aware.
Oracle still maintains OpenJDK and OpenJRE. Keep in mind that I used that word "maintain" pretty loosely here. The release cycle is less of a cycle and probably driven by some unwanted obligation. This is particularly difficult if you need to run Java on Windows because the Microsoft builds generally don't include older versions, and there aren't handy repositories with historical builds available like on Linux.
Anyway, the alternative to this is Adoptium. They have portable zip file builds as well as MSI packages with options to even add the Oracle-specific environmental variables during installation. To be clear, these are vanilla OpenJRE builds, as far as I'm aware, which are what's used as the Java reference build, and what Oracle uses to build their version. The offer both Windows and Linux builds of it, too. So you can probably get the most recent build of the super old version you need for that obscure software you're forced to support, regardless of platform. And it's all free.
We have a few things running using it. I recommend everyone check it out. The only snag I've seen with it is the lack of automatic updating, so it might not be suitable for environments requiring it on client devices, but for servers where updates are likely to be much more tightly controlled, it's definitely worth exploring.
https://adoptium.net/
Just to be clear, there "Java" is not one thing.
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) - the most common form of Java, allows applications written in Java to run on your computer. This is the "java plugin" or the "java virtual machine (jvm)"
Java (the language) - an object oriented programming language.
Java (the compiler) - turns Java code (language) into class files that can be executed by the JRE/JVM.
Java (the library) - a set of components for cross-platform GUI and other programming elements.
I assume you're asking about replacing the JRE, the Java plugin that most people use. If you mean otherwise, please update your question.
Microsoft used to have a Java Virtual Machine included on all their OSes, but that is usually ignored in favor of a JRE plugin from Oracle.
There are a few other JRE/JVM replacements you can try:
JOEQ (ironically enough itself written in Java) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/joeq/
Wonka - http://wonka.acunia.com/
Sable (no longer actively maintained) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/sablevm/files/
Each of these may have some amounts of compatibility, but you'll probably find when running Java meant for a newer version of the JRE, you may run into compatibility issues.
Something else to consider is whether or not you really need Java. Are there specific tasks you do that actually explicitly require JRE to run? If not, try going without it.
The Oracle JRE is built from OpenJDK. You can get OpenJDK from many sources, including building it yourself. Azul Systems (my employer) offers the Zulu family of downloads, all of which provide OpenJDK binaries certified to meet the Java Standard Edition test specs for each major Java version (today 8, 7, and 6.) It should be a suitable replacement for your Oracle Java runtimes on any of Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms. Zulu is free to download from www.azul.com/zulu. I hope this helps. Disclosure: I am product manager for the Zulu and Zing product lines at Azul Systems.