How do I get older versions (with ubuntu cmd line)

[Aksh124]

title^^

[jgneff]

The OpenJDK Snap package provides only the latest release plus any early-access builds. For older releases, you can install one of the packages provided by Ubuntu. For even older releases, you might need to get them directly from Oracle.

For example, the OpenJDK Snap package currently provides JDK versions 20, 21, and 22, as shown by the command snap info openjdk as follows:

$ snap info openjdk
name:      openjdk
summary:   Current JDK release and early-access builds
...
channels:
  latest/stable:    20.0.1+9 2023-06-16 (1388) 249MB -
  latest/candidate: ↑                                
  latest/beta:      21+28    2023-06-22 (1408) 256MB -
  latest/edge:      22+3     2023-06-22 (1405) 257MB -

The releases published by Ubuntu can be found with the apt-cache search command, as shown by the following example on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which provides JDK versions 8, 11, 13, 16, and 17.

$ apt-cache search jdk-headless 
default-jdk-headless - Standard Java or Java compatible Development Kit (headless)
openjdk-11-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)
openjdk-13-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)
openjdk-16-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)
openjdk-17-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)
openjdk-8-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)

Even older releases can be found on the Oracle Java Archive page.