Run Java Applets on Ubuntu 20.04 with Java 8

Recently I came across a request to run Java Applet on Ubuntu 20.04. Java Applet is an old technology currently not supported by latest version of JDK, JRE and Eclipse.

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.

In order to run Applets, we need to install older version of Java 8 and configure Eclipse to use the specific JRE version. I have summarized the steps below which I followed-

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.

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.

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.