Oracle releases patch updates for all its products every three months. The patches for this quarter are available as per schedule. These updates are called “Critical Patch Updates” or CPU.
Why is updating to Java 8 Update 231 important for me?
Oracle has released fixes for 20 exploits and vulnerabilities in Update 231. Almost all the vulnerabilities can be exploited over the network without a user login. So it’s important for users to update to the latest version of Java. You can read about the latest patch release notes here. This page lists the bug fixes included in JDK 8u231.
How do I update my Java Runtime Environment to version 8 Update 231?
First, you should know which version of Java you’re running on your computer. To check this, you can use java -version command. Once you are sure that you don’t have the latest version of Java installed, you can use the control panel applet to update Java: You can also manually download Java 8 Update 231. Manual downloads are good for users who do not have Java installed on your systems or they want to download the Java 8 Update 231 offline installer for later use. It is available for the following platforms:
Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) Mac OS (64-bit) Solaris and Solaris SPARC (64-bit)
The page lists offline + online installers. Is Java 1.8 the same as Java 8? 1.8 is the version of the Java Development Kit (JDK) also known as Software Development Kit or SDK. Java 8 is the actual version and the runtime environment has the same version as Java. How can I update my JDK to 1.8.0_231? If you have JDK 1.8 installed, you can download and update the development kit to the latest Update 231. Downloading and installing the latest JDK will also update the runtime environment. There is no need to separately download the JRE again. Installing JDK is enough for updating both JDK and JRE.
Final Thoughts
Java 8 is becoming obsolete. Commercial users of Java 8 have to pay Oracle for a commercial license to get updates. But if you are using Java 8 for personal purposes, you can get these updates for free. The free updates will be available until the end of 2020. After that Java 8 will reach its end of life. You should try out new versions of Java like Java 11 and Java 13.
