How to set JAVA_HOME and PATH in Linux

The JAVA_HOME environment variable points to the JDK installation directory and used by many Java tools and applications like Eclipse, Maven, ANT, Tomcat etc. to figure out Java executables as they need Java for running. Unfortunately, When you install Java on Linux or Windows, this environment variable is not set automatically. You need to do it yourself. Java developers like me always set useful environment variables like JAVA_HOME, PATH, and CLASSPATH on the login scripts executed by the shell when you log in to Linux e.g. bash_profile.sh, but you can also set JAVA_HOME into /etc/profile for all users. I'll show you steps how to find the location of Java and how to setup the JAVA_HOME in Linux in this article and these steps should also work with any Linux or Java version e.g. Ubuntu, RedHat, CentOS, SUSE, ArchLinux, Debian, Fedora etc.

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