OpenJDK is a free and open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition. It is a community-driven project that was started in 2006.
OpenJDK is published under the
The goal of OpenJDK is to offer a free and high-performance alternative to Oracle JDK.
Because the code for OpenJDK is publicly available, it also allows individual software engineers and organizations to use it as a foundation to form their implementation of the Java SE platform.
Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are a few well-known Linux distributions that include OpenJDK as their default Java SE implementation.
The OpenJDK Community is a worldwide community of developers, users, and enthusiasts.
They collectively collaborate on open-source projects for building the reference implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), and other related projects.
They also take care of building and maintaining other related open source projects. The community enables anyone who wants to change, fix, or develop features for OpenJDK to do so.
Downloading and installing OpenJDK on various operating systems is not very challenging.
As already mentioned above, Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and RedHat Enterprise Linux include OpenJDK as their default Java SE implementation.
The latest LTS (Long Term Support) version of production-ready open-source JDK builds for Windows, MacOS, and Linux operating systems can be downloaded in the form of .tar.gz or .zip archives from the following page:
You can download any other version by visiting the release specific URL, as per the pattern below:
https://jdk.java.net/<major_version>/
You need to replace <major_version> with the OpenJDK release version of your choice. For example, https://jdk.java.net/16/ for OpenJDK version 16 or https://jdk.java.net/11/ for Open JDK version 11.
To install, extract the archive’s contents to a directory and update the PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables.
OpenJDK builds are not supported by Oracle. However, third party support is available from various vendors. The OpenJDK Community will also port Oracle security fixes to OpenJDK builds.
OpenJDK is supported by several big tech companies like Red Hat and IBM. The goal of OpenJDK is to offer a free and high-performance alternative to Oracle JDK.
OpenJDK can be found in many different software applications, and it also powers many devices and gaming consoles.