Minecraft won't launch in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

Using Ubuntu 18.04, Minecraft Launcher 1.6.89-j and OpenJDK 10.0.1 it throws the following errors after starting Minecraft.jar and pressing the play button:

[23:21:35 INFO]: Ignoring visibility rule and showing launcher due to a game crash
[23:21:35 ERROR]: Game ended with bad state (exit code 1)

It doesn't say anything else and I've already tried the "fix" mentioned here: Minecraft launcher refuses to launch game in Ubuntu 17.04

Solution

I've had the same problem, which also doesn't seem fixable by previous answers; this appears to be a simple case that OpenJDK 10 on Ubuntu cannot run the current version of Minecraft with the 1.6.89-j Launcher.

Luckily, OpenJDK 8 is still available in the Universe repository, and if your system has been upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 then it will probably already be installed. If not, install the openjdk-8-jre package.

Try starting the Launcher/game with /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/bin/java instead of just java.

Unfortunately OpenJDK 8 will soon reach end-of-life for support, so you need to be aware of that.

Additionally the openjdk-11 packages offered by Ubuntu actually contain OpenJDK 10 at the moment, and are intended to silently upgrade to the real OpenJDK 11 when that is released.

See https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-release/2018-February/004275.html for more information on the versions and support periods.

Comments

[TonyG]

+1 for the informed response, not necessarily as a vote for an Answer. I'm trying to build Spigot over Ubuntu with JDK11, was confused by the 11=10 thing, and might shift back to v8 until Minecraft has moved forward.