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Comment by atomicnumber3 | Hacker News Reader

I've peripherally known Corretto is the Amazon distribution of Java (specifically, OpenJDK), but I never really looked up what the difference between, say, the releases from AdoptOpenJDK and Corretto are.

I looked it up, it looks like it's generally:

1. LTS support - adoptopenjdk doesn't do LTS

2. Patches that come from Amazon that are upstreamed to OpenJDK but appear in Corretto first since, you know, that's where Amazon develops them.

Did I miss anything?

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Adopt OpenJDK did have the LTS releases. They rebranded last release - https://adoptium.net. The quarterly updates to Java 8, 11, and now 17 are all there, and up till then, been pulling 8/11 from Adopt OpenJDK's site.

All in all, not much different. The last release was a bit of a kerfuffle, as they migrated web sites.

From the Adoptium FAQ:

> This is the project and brand name for the binaries that the Eclipse Foundation produces. You can think of these as the successor binaries to AdoptOpenJDK.

The current LTS versions are 8, 11 and 17. Supported platforms include arm32 (Linux), aarch64 (Linux & macOS), x64 (Windows, Alpine & Linux w/ glibc) and x86 (Linux).

AdoptOpenJDK used to provide OpenJ9 binaries, are those gone now with Adoptium?

I did find some OpenJ9 github site which mentioned they could not provide binaries any more, but I don't really understand why.

Correct, they've dropped OpenJ9 support during the rebranding.

As to the reason why, apparently Oracle revoked their TCK[0] license[1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Compatibility_Kit

1. https://twitter.com/volker_simonis/status/105261065466907443...

See this Reddit thread for more background:

https://old.reddit.com/r/java/comments/l5m3p6/eclipse_to_hos...

IBM offers OpenJ9 binaries under the Semaru name here: https://developer.ibm.com/languages/java/semeru-runtimes

LTS means active support (call/email to fix issue), what Adopt does is just builds from branches that receive commits/fixes from other vendors/people.

They don't have TCK, they do their own tests on the builds. But you could probably do such builds yourself, everyone has access to openjdk github repo.

I would call it more like Long Term Build.

That one HN comment that recommended JDK engines explicitly warned against Eclipse. Not sure if it still applies with the AdoptOpenJDK -> Eclipse migration

My Experience Corretto is easier to deploy on systems that just need the JRE seems to be a more drop in replacement to the old consumer Java8 msi installers, than the OpenJDK "offical" packages which are some what confusing.

IIRC we had to move to Corretto when using AWS CodeBuild, because AWS dropped support of AdoptOpenJDK in their CodeBuild container images.

So basically we use AWS distro to run tests and build our docker images, and those images use AdoptOpenJDK; which is not ideal, but so far we have been OK.

Basically, you moved to Corretto because Amazon forced you to. That's great :)

I think this is a common reason for moving to a particular distribution, but also sad to see. Amazon used to be impartial and independent infrastructure provider but as they ingest more and more software, your infrastructure and software now starts to depend on Amazons software.

> I've peripherally known Corretto is the Amazon distribution of Java (specifically, OpenJDK), but I never really looked up what the difference between, say, the releases from AdoptOpenJDK and Corretto are. (...) Did I miss anything?

According to [1], Amazon Corretor is a OpenJDK build which is:

* maintained by Amazon (back ported bug fixes, patches),

* includes Amazon's custom crypto provider optimized for AWS,

* Optimized builds for Amazon's Linux distro, Amazon Linux 2.

[1] https://whichjdk.com/#amazon-corretto

I asked an adjacent question and am also curious, great that they have provided another option for the OpenJDK community but I can’t see anything compelling that would make me consider this over Adopt.

If you are already paying AWS for premium support, one reason to use Corretto rather than Adoptium is that your AWS premium support plan covers Corretto as well.

"If you already have an AWS Support Plan, Corretto is covered on the same basis as all other supported AWS Services and software." https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/faqs/

> but I can’t see anything compelling that would make me consider this over Adopt

All comes down to who do you trust to build and package something correctly?

Adopt OpenJDK didn't have TCK compliance - this seems to have changed with the rebranding to adoptium.

3. Additional pre-built downloads for things like x64/musl, aarch32.

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