Java 15 was out, available to the public on September 15^th 2020. In this article, I will help you get started experimenting Java 15 with OpenJDK – an open-source distribution of Java SE Development Kit: download and install OpenJDK 15 on Windows operating system.

OpenJDK is licensed under GNU General Public License version 2, which means developers can use it for personal and commercial use.

 

1. Download OpenJDK 15

OpenJDK is distributed as a zip archive for Windows (no installer program). So head over to OpenJDK 15 homepage to download it, or click this direct OpenJDK 15 download link. You will get a file named openjdk-15_windows-x64_bin.zip downloaded onto your computer.

After download, I strongly recommend you to use the certutil in Windows to verify the file’s SHA256 checksum – by running this command:

certutil –hashfile openjdk-15_windows-x64_bin.zip SHA256

Compare the outputted value with the one published here. If both matches, it’s safely to use the downloaded zip file.

 

2. Install OpenJDK 15

Extract the downloaded zip file to a separate directory on your computer, say in D:\OpenJDK15, then you will get the home directory of OpenJDK 15 is D:\OpenJDK15\jdk-15.

Then you need to update the JAVA_HOME and PATH environment variables as follows:

JAVA_HOME= D:\OpenJDK15\jdk-15

PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;…

You can follow this video on how to set environment variables for Java.

Then open a new command prompt window, type the command java –version to check. You should see this screen:

This means you have successfully installed OpenJDK 15 and configured the environment properly.

To see the download and installation of OpenJDK 15 in action, watch the video below:

 

Learn more:

• How to check Java version
• Java SE versions history
• How to set environment variables for Java using command line
• How to write, compile and run a hello world Java program for beginners
• What are JVM, JRE and JDK