install-jdk-on-steam-deck

• How it works
• Usage
• TO-DO

How it works

By default, the SteamDeck has a read-only immutable OS file system, which means that you can't simply install anything using the pacman package manager that comes with the OS (arch linux), since it would modify the OS file system.

So in order to install anything outside the Software Center (which installs programs in a way that doesn't affect the OS by using flatpak), you have to modify things in you home directory, which shouldn't mess up with the OS and break the system.

Taking this into account, the script located in the scripts directory of this repository will:

• Download the official oracle JDK 17 compressed file into your home directory, more specifically into ~/.local/jdk
• Exec a checksum of the file using the official sha256 checksum
• Extract the file into ~/.local/jdk/jdk-17.0.4.1
• Add some environment variables to your ~/.profile and then source it, if it wasn't already sourced, in your bashrc, so your programs / scripts know where java is installed. The variables are:
  • JAVA_HOME: which points to the ~/.local/jdk/jdk-17.0.4.1
  • PATH: which adds the bin directory located in the JAVA_HOME, so every executable is available for you to run

By adding the variables to .profile instead of .bashrc we ensure to be more "shell agnostic", so if you run a script in another shell like sh or launch a graphical program, it should read the environment variables defined there.

.profile is "manually" sourced in .bashrc since bash will try to source first .bash_profile and .bash_login if they exist. To learn about this:

• man sh: Invocation
• bash manual: Invoked with name sh.

With this, you will have a local installation of java and even better, you can install multiple versions and then point to the one you need.

This script only works (currently) for the jdk-17, since in order to download jdk-11 from oracle's page requires a login.

Usage

You can choose which version to install by setting the variable JDK_VERSION before executing the script, you can even do it on the same command! If you don't select any version, jdk-17 will be installed by default.

To install jdk-17:

git clone https://github.com/BlackCorsair/install-jdk-on-steam-deck.git && \
JDK_VERSION=17 ./install-jdk-on-steam-deck/scripts/install-jdk.sh

To install jdk-21:

git clone https://github.com/BlackCorsair/install-jdk-on-steam-deck.git && \
JDK_VERSION=21 ./install-jdk-on-steam-deck/scripts/install-jdk.sh

How to uninstall it

# remove the installation directory this script creates
rm -rf /home/deck/.local/jdk

# remove the ~/.profile file this script creates OR remove the lines using an editor:
# export JAVA_HOME=/home/deck/.local/jdk
# export PATH=$PATH:/home/deck/.local/jdk/jdk-17.0.8/bin
rm -f ~/.profile

# Optionally, you can remove the line added to your bashrc
#
# [[ -f ~/.profile ]] && source ~/.profile
#
# This line shouldn't interfere with anything since it doesn't load the ~/.profile unless it exists

TO-DO

• Add an uninstall script or option
• Add support for java 8 (see issue)
• If you want anything added, just let me know by opening an issue