Eclipse Temurin
By the Eclipse Adoptium working group
Eclipse Temurin is a free, open-source distribution of OpenJDK produced by the Eclipse Adoptium working group, providing prebuilt, tested Java runtime and development kit binaries for multiple operating systems and CPU architectures. It…
Definition
Eclipse Temurin is a free, open-source distribution of OpenJDK produced by the Eclipse Adoptium working group, providing prebuilt, tested Java runtime and development kit binaries for multiple operating systems and CPU architectures. It grew out of the AdoptOpenJDK community project and is one of the most widely used vendor-neutral OpenJDK builds for both production deployment and local development environments across the Java community.
Overview
Eclipse Temurin exists to solve a practical problem that OpenJDK's source-code-only nature leaves open: most developers and operations teams do not want to compile a Java runtime from source, they want a tested, downloadable binary they can trust across the specific combination of operating system and CPU architecture they run in production. Temurin is the successor brand to AdoptOpenJDK, a community effort that built exactly this kind of binary distribution pipeline, which was donated to the Eclipse Foundation and reorganized under the Eclipse Adoptium project to give it a vendor-neutral governance structure. Mechanically, the Adoptium project takes the OpenJDK source code for each release and long-term support line, builds it through a standardized, automated pipeline across supported platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS on both x86 and ARM architectures, and runs a quality assurance test suite before publishing the resulting binaries. This build infrastructure is itself open and auditable, which distinguishes Temurin from vendor JDKs whose build pipelines are proprietary, even when the underlying OpenJDK source is the same. Among OpenJDK distributions, Temurin sits next to Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu, BellSoft Liberica, and SapMachine as one of several vendor-neutral or vendor-backed builds of the same upstream OpenJDK code; it differs from these primarily in its governance under the Eclipse Foundation rather than a single commercial vendor, and in being the direct continuation of the widely adopted AdoptOpenJDK project's binaries and reputation. In practice, Temurin is a common default choice for Docker base images, CI/CD pipelines, and package manager installations of Java, precisely because its neutral governance and long build history make it a low-friction, no-strings-attached option for teams that do not need a specific vendor's commercial support contract. Many popular container images and Linux package repositories that need to ship a working JDK default to Temurin builds. The main consideration for adopters is less about Temurin's quality, which is generally solid given its rigorous build and test pipeline, and more about matching the right release line to a project's needs: teams must still choose between long-term support and interim releases, and between Temurin and a commercially supported alternative like Corretto or Zulu if they specifically need a vendor support contract or extended patch commitments beyond what the community project provides. Because Temurin has no single company obligated to offer paid support, organizations that need guaranteed response times on production incidents typically pair Temurin with an internal support arrangement or select a vendor-backed distribution instead.
Key Features
- Built and tested by the Eclipse Adoptium working group
- Successor to the AdoptOpenJDK community distribution project
- Provides binaries across Linux, Windows, and macOS on multiple architectures
- Uses an open, auditable, standardized build and test pipeline
- Governed under the Eclipse Foundation rather than a single vendor
- Offers both long-term support and interim OpenJDK release lines
- Commonly used as the default JDK in container base images
- Free to use with no commercial licensing requirements