Installing Java and JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi

One of the most read articles on my blog is about the installation of a recent Java on Raspberry Pi (March 13, 2019) , so it was time for an update, which is here republished on foojay.

Disclaimer: this article is only valid for Raspberry Pi’s with an ARMv7 or ARMv8 processor . In the Raspberry Pi specifications table on Wikipedia , you get a clear overview of the Pi-types with this processor:

• Model A+, version 3
• Model B, version 2, 3 and 4
• Compute Module, version 3

In the release notes of Raspbian you can see that the version of 2019-06-20 includes OpenJDK 11:

2019-06-20:
* Based on Debian Buster
* Oracle Java 7 and 8 replaced with OpenJDK 11

So, if we start with a fresh new Raspbian OS, we indeed get this Java version result:

$ java -version
openjdk version "11.0.3" 2019-04-16
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.3+7-post-Raspbian-5)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 11.0.3+7-post-Raspbian-5, mixed mode)

This means we are already good to start any Java 11 based program!

As JavaFX is no longer part of the Java JDK, since version 11, running a JavaFX program on the Raspberry Pi will not work out of the box.

Luckily, we can use the Liberica JDK, which is provided by BellSoft. They have a version dedicated for the Raspberry Pi, which includes JavaFX, so you will be able to run a JavaFX application with a simple “java -jar yourapp.jar” start command.

Installing Liberica JDK

We only need the download link from their site to install an alternative Java JDK like this:

$ cd /home/pi
$ wget https://download.bell-sw.com/java/13/bellsoft-jdk13-linux-arm32-vfp-hflt.deb
$ sudo apt-get install ./bellsoft-jdk13-linux-arm32-vfp-hflt.deb
$ sudo update-alternatives --config javac
$ sudo update-alternatives --config java

When this is done, we can check the version again and it should look like this:

$ java --version
openjdk version "13-BellSoft" 2019-09-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 13-BellSoft+33)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 13-BellSoft+33, mixed mode)

On my test-Pi I even keeping different versions of LibericaJDK and switching is very easy with “update-alternatives”.

Install Scripts on GitHub

On Github, in the sources of my book “Getting started with Java on Raspberry Pi” , you can find install scripts for multiple versions of Liberica JDK, which already contain the correct download link for each one: